XO new boot delay feature not working

payback007

Hi all,

there is a new feature available in XO to set a defined time in seconds to delay the autostart of a VM.

For details about the new feature can be found here: implementation of start delay for VM - issue #3909

It seems the parameter is also set in the VM correctly. Here is a shortened part of result of xe vm-param-list uuid=...:

                     live ( RO): true
            guest-metrics-last-updated ( RO): 20190313T06:38:53Z
                   can-use-hotplug-vbd ( RO): unspecified
                   can-use-hotplug-vif ( RO): unspecified
              cooperative ( RO) [DEPRECATED]: true
                                  tags (SRW): 
                             appliance ( RW): <not in database>
                     snapshot-schedule ( RW): <not in database>
                      is-vmss-snapshot ( RO): false
                           start-delay ( RW): 240
                        shutdown-delay ( RW): 0
                                 order ( RW): 0
                               version ( RO): 0
                         generation-id ( RO): 6481430157605823834:6102110844557853395
             hardware-platform-version ( RO): 0
                     has-vendor-device ( RW): false
                       requires-reboot ( RO): false
                       reference-label ( RO):

I tested with 2 VMs:
VM1: auto-start enabled with 0 seconds boot-delay
VM2: auto-start enabled with 240 seconds boot-delay (see above)

What is happening:
Instead of starting VM1 on boot and start VM2 240s later, it happens that VM2 is starting immediately and VM1 is started an undefined time later. For my point of view, XO implementation is working but there is something not working in my XCP-ng installation.

Can anybody help?

Danp

Have you read this? https://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra/issues/3261

bnrstnr created this issue in vatesfr/xen-orchestra

closed VM start-delay and order options in advanced tabs #3261

payback007

The topic you mention is using vApps or high availability.

I mean this quite new feature "Start delay (seconds), programmed the last days in XO:

Bildschirmfoto 2019-03-13 um 19.41.53.png

Do I need to define a HA mode?

Danp

I understand. However, @olivierlambert stated that the start-delay feature would only be useful on a HA / vApps environment.

They implemented the feature, but I suspect that this "limitation" still applies.

payback007

Is it possible to turn on HA mode on a single machine Setup?

payback007

my solution for now:

implement new vApp
writing start script to start vApp-uuid after boot

By the way, the start delay feature edits the time delay between two start up groups of the vApp feature.

borzel

Is it possible to turn on HA mode on a single machine Setup?

@payback007 No. "XenServer"-style HA needs at least 3 hosts.

payback007

Any ideas for a more elegant way than to write a script? For my point of view vApps should work without HA mode but unfortunately it doesn't work on my XCP-ng server. Only console/script start of the vApp using

xe appliance-start uuid= "set here the uuid of the vAppp"

is working. But it is again rework for the next XCP-ng version, I think manually set vices in systemd are not persistent through an update. Will vApp supported also in future? there are some discussions about it, if really needed.