XCP-ng 8.3 updates announcements and testing

olivierlambert

Updated on our prod cluster, works very well (full EPYC)

Andrew

@gduperrey I updated my little AMD Ryzen 5 5600U (Zen3) and it's running great!

As for the important VM to VM network performance, using Debian 13 and iperf3 single thread, before (update not enabled) is about 7.2-8Gb/sec. After the update (xen-platform-pci-bar-uc=false) I get about 10.1-13Gb/sec. So that's about a 40-60% improvement. This brings it in line with similar small Intel systems.

I did not see any change (or problem) setting it on my small test Intel system (getting about 10.1-10.8Gb/sec).

FYI: Remember, after the config change and xe-toolstack-restart, restart the VMs!

olivierlambert

Yeah I had to stop then start the VM to enjoy the new performance. On my end, iperf (not iperf3) bring even more perf on my setup, especially with multiple threads (-P4 and -P8 gave more than 100% boost)

gduperrey

New update candidate for you to test!

A new non-urgent update is ready for user testing before a future collective release. Below are the details.

A bug was found in the Emergency Network Reset due to desynchronisation between xsconsole and XAPI. This issue prevented the Emergency Network Reset from working at all. This update includes the fixes from the upstream xsconsole project to fix it.

Maintenance updates

xsconsole
- Backport sync of network reset trigger file path with XAPI to fix emergency network reset
- Backport fix for pool.conf IPv6 to avoid IPv6 truncation

Test on XCP-ng 8.3

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

Reboot is not strictly necessary, but the xsconsole instance running on the first virtual terminal of your host won't be restarted otherwise. If you do not reboot, make sure to start xsconsole from another terminal after the update.

The usual update rules apply: pool coordinator first, etc.

Versions:

xsconsole: 11.0.8-1.2.xcpng8.3

What to test

Normal xsconsole usage, is still useful feedback. However, if possible, the most helpful test would be performing an Emergency Network Reset through xsconsole, making actual configuration changes and verifying that they are correctly applied after reboot.

Test window before official release of the updates

None defined, but early feedback is always better than late feedback, which is in turn better than no feedback

gduperrey

New update candidate for you to test!

A new non-urgent update is ready for user testing before a future collective release. Below are the details.

Maintenance updates

broadcom-bnxt-en: Update driver to version 1.10.3_232.0.155.5

Test on XCP-ng 8.3

yum clean metadata --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
yum update --enablerepo=xcp-ng-testing
reboot

A reboot is preferable to load the new version of the driver.

The usual update rules apply: pool coordinator first, etc.

Versions:

broadcom-bnxt-en: 1.10.3_232.0.155.5-1.xcpng8.3

What to test

Normal use and anything else you want to test.

Test window before official release of the updates

None defined, but early feedback is always better than late feedback, which is in turn better than no feedback

gduperrey

Updates published: https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/09/01/september-2025-maintenance-update-for-xcp-ng-8-3/

Thank you for the tests!

manilx

@gduperrey Installed at HomeLab. No issues.
Running via
yum clean metadata ; yum update

john.c

@manilx said in XCP-ng 8.3 updates announcements and testing:

@gduperrey Installed at HomeLab. No issues.
Running via
yum clean metadata ; yum update

You must have been looking forward to this improvement for quite a while. Once it reaches the point where it can be rolled into production, your AMD Epyc servers will get to see a boost, the Linux guests any way.

manilx

@john.c Will apply to business EPYC servers right away

manilx

@john.c Updated our 2 production pools, with RPU.

RPU emptied the master, rebooted BUT then nothing else.
It should have moved all VM's to the other host, patched/rebooted and then migrating the VM's where they were.
This did not happen. I had to manually empty the other hosts, patch, reboot and migrate the VM's.

flakpyro

@gduperrey Installed on about 50 servers across various pools and remote sites. No issues. Ran a couple backup jobs as well which completed without issue.

Greg_E

@manilx

Once in a while my rpu will do this, then I handle it manually. Been happening more often since the 8.3 upgrade, but not enough to post about it yet since we are only a couple of updates into the LTS. Still watching though and will probably do this patch on wednesday.