Pre-Setup for Migration of 75+ VM's from Proxmox VE to XCP-ng

[cichy]

Apologies if this ends up being a duplicate post but I cannot seem to find a solution to my issue -- even after having combed these forums and watching everything Tom Lawrence has to offer RE XCP-ng.

I've just stood up a new XCP-ng server and am configuring the network. I have three identical servers (each with dual 40-core Xeons, 512GB RAM, 10x 1.92TB NVMe SSD, Dual Quad Port 1G NIC's && a Dual 10G DAC NIC). However, I'm just working on the first one atm.

My problem: I cannot seem to get any of the NIC's to show as options when creating VM's -- this is a 'me' problem, I realize. I'm sure it's a simple solution, though I have not been able to locate one.

Here's a screen shot of my list of NIC's:

I've dedicated a single NIC to the management network (though contemplating a redundant bond), I've created two LACP bonds - one for migration, the other for backup, and lastly I have one 10G NIC dedicated toward VM traffic as the other is for direct access to the NAS that houses all my VM's.

I've not assigned any VLAN's. Truth be told, I'm not entirely familiar with this yet on XCP-ng and so, for now, I am going to let our switches handle VLAN's atm.

Here's what I see when I try to add a NIC to a new VM upon creation:

Not sure what is happening here. I am a total n00b to XCP-ng. I do have extensive experience with Citrix, Proxmox, and vSphere though. So, hopefully this is just something simple I can resolve.

Thanks in advance and I'm very excited to be part of these forums!

[acebmxer]

@cichy

You need to select a vm template.

[cichy]

@acebmxer

OMG! I can't believe I had not tried this. I guess I was avoiding using a template period. Now I understand, it's just a base point. Thank you so much!

[olivierlambert]

Don't blame yourself, XO UI isn't great. It will be a lot more natural in XO 6 VM creation

[nikade]

Welcome to the community @cichy!
Just out of curiosity, why are you migrating from proxmox to xcp-ng? Are you ex. vmware?
We used both vmware and xcp-ng for a long time and xcp-ng is was the obvious alternative for us for workloads that we didn't want in our vmware environment, mostly because of using shared storage and the general similarities.

[cichy]

@nikade thanks for your question!

Just out of curiosity, why are you migrating from proxmox to xcp-ng? Are you ex. vmware?
We used both vmware and xcp-ng for a long time and xcp-ng is was the obvious alternative for us for workloads that we didn't want in our vmware environment, mostly because of using shared storage and the general similarities.

So, in short, yes. Ex-VMWare. Though, we are still running VMW on core infrastructure - no way to escape this. I am investigating XCP-ng because I'm primarily looking for cost effective 'edge' and/or 'ai' hypervisor infra solutions. Initially, I used Harvester (by SUSE) for its flexible composability and Kubevirt integration -- we were orchestrating Windows clients for scalable (400+ simul users) viz app. Unfortunately Harvester's UI AND CLI lack a lot of base and common functionality required in our use case. So, I leaned in on Proxmox. After about a year, I've started to realize that although LXC containers are a major convenience, they run directly on dom0, which is absolutely nuts. In addition, ZFS volumes were eating 50% of the system's RAM, etc. Great for a "homelab" not necessarily for production.

This brings us to how I wound up with XCP-ng. There are certainly functional eccentricities: the XO UI leaves A LOT to be desired. However, outside of this and as I become more comfortable with the way it operates, it is the closest thing to ESXi/vSphere I've used thus far. This in conjunction with my honed K8S && Swarm skills have me thinking I may have just found THE solution I've been looking for!

I do have a minor gripe, @olivierlambert : currently I am testing this for scaled deployment across the org. BUT, there are no pricing options in the sub $1k range that allow me to test enterprise/production features long-term prior to deploying. We never jump into launching solutions without testing for 9-12 months, at least. So, to spend $4k+ just to POC an edge cluster is nearly impossible to justify as an expense. I am currently using XO Community but have already run into the paywall with certain features I want to test 'long-term' - prior to deployment.

Thanks for your assistance! It looks like I'll be pretty active here until I iron everything out and gradually start diving in a littler deeper and migrate VM's off of Proxmox and into XCP-ng.