XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!

stevewest15

Hi,

Is there any harm to leaving the former experimental EXT4 SR driver installed for anyone who has it installed? I understand and agree with sr-create command for ext4 will fail for new SR. I think this might be a better solution for us who used the experimental ext4 and don't want to move, destroy and copy back all VMs, etc.

stevewest15

@Biggen You can do this via cli...see if this doc is helpful (just make sure to back/move/copy any data before performing these steps): https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131328

Biggen

@stevewest15 said in XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!:

@Biggen You can do this via cli...see if this doc is helpful (just make sure to back/move/copy any data before performing these steps): https://support.citrix.com/article/CTX131328

Thanks for that!

I’ll wait until we official move off the RC and onto a production build before I do this. Hopefully the Vates team puts together a short tutorial that give us a specific upgrade workflow.

mortenchristensn

Fresh install of RC1 on a test-machine.
Not part of a pool and no SAN. Just local storage on same nvme-ssd, XCP-ng is installed on.
I choose EXT in the install-process.
After install
file -sL /dev/nvme*
says, that the storage is ext3.

Is EXT4 a possibility on Local Storage, or what is the right choise for Local Storage?

mortenchristensn

The homepage welcome-screen on a 8.1.0 server point to download of XCP-ng Center 8.0.1.26.
That xcp-ng-center version cannot connect to a 8.1 server.

stormi

@mortenchristensn I'm not sure that your test for the file type is valid. XCP-ng first creates a LV on the device then creates the ext4 filesystem in that. I assume the ext3 filesystem you found is that of the dom0 root, not that of the SR.

Here's how you can check that the local SR is ext4:

[12:36 xcp-ng-fsspniqy ~]# mount | grep XSLocalEXT
/dev/mapper/XSLocalEXT--963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748-963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748 on /run/sr-mount/963b005a-a685-4a5f-31c0-af9a0bd98748 type ext4 (rw,relatime)
[12:37 xcp-ng-fsspniqy ~]# file -sL /dev/mapper/XSLocalEXT--963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748-963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748
/dev/mapper/XSLocalEXT--963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748-963b005a--a685--4a5f--31c0--af9a0bd98748: Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data, UUID=0a1c1c21-afc4-4187-844f-7554f3f95953 (needs journal recovery) (extents) (64bit) (large files) (huge files)

stormi

@stevewest15 said in XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!:

Hi,

Is there any harm to leaving the former experimental EXT4 SR driver installed for anyone who has it installed? I understand and agree with sr-create command for ext4 will fail for new SR. I think this might be a better solution for us who used the experimental ext4 and don't want to move, destroy and copy back all VMs, etc.

We leave it for 8.1 in the sm-additional-drivers package. But I want to remove it for future releases. It adds maintenance overhead to maintain it. If we had to maintain forever any experiment that we do then we would have to stop experimenting. That storage driver was always advertised as experimental. I wanted to provide an easy transition and I did work on it despite it being experimental so not intended for production, but it's really not simple to do and would be risky for your data.

stormi

@mortenchristensn said in XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!:

The homepage welcome-screen on a 8.1.0 server point to download of XCP-ng Center 8.0.1.26.
That xcp-ng-center version cannot connect to a 8.1 server.

Thanks. I think that's because there's no officially stable release of XCP-ng Center out yet due do the fact that @borzel is alone to maintain is and doesn't have time for it. Either there will be a stable release of the center before our final release, or we'll update the welcome page to point to the latest dev release (with a warning).

olivierlambert

We can also link the GitHub repo directly

borzel

@olivierlambert I would prefer that

dariosplit

"Existing SRs are untouched (so remain formatted to EXT3)" How to convert existing Local storage? I upgraded to 8.1, but Local storage is Ext3.

stormi

@dariosplit said in XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!:

"Existing SRs are untouched (so remain formatted to EXT3)" How to convert existing Local storage? I upgraded to 8.1, but Local storage is Ext3.

Quoting further:

There is no easy way to convert an existing SR created with our driver, so those using it will need to move the VDIs out (to another SR or to export them), destroy the SR and create an EXT SR instead. Make sure to do this on XCP-ng 8.1.

So is your question about how to create a SR and how to destroy one? What about @Biggen's link shared above?

mortenchristensn

@stormi said in :

I'm not sure that your test for the file type is valid.

You are right. Running your test on my server gives same answer
Linux rev 1.0 ext4 filesystem data

mortenchristensn

@stormi said in :

So is your question about how to create a SR and how to destroy one? What about @Biggen's link shared above?

The link is not telling, how to change the Local Storage.
As far as I can see, Local Storage is not a partition like SR's on other physical disks.

peder

@mortenchristensn Local storage is an SR.

The commands below will remove the SR named "Local storage" and create a new one with the same name on the same device

If you have a pool with several hosts you need to run these commands on each host and, as stormi points out in the comment below, you need to move any VMs out of the Local SR before removing it.

# Get the IDs and device path to the current Local SR :
# xe host-list | grep -B1 $HOSTNAME | grep ^uuid| cut -d\: -f2 | cut -d" " -f2 > HostUuid.txt
# xe pbd-list sr-name-label=Local\ storage host-uuid=`cat HostUuid.txt` | grep sr-uuid | cut -d\: -f2 | cut -d" " -f2 > SR-Uuid.txt
# xe pbd-list sr-name-label=Local\ storage host-uuid=`cat HostUuid.txt` | grep ^uuid | cut -d\: -f2 | cut -d" " -f2 > Uuid.txt
# xe pbd-list sr-name-label=Local\ storage host-uuid=`cat HostUuid.txt` | grep device-config| cut -d\: -f3 | cut -d" " -f2 > Device.txt
# Unplug and destroy the Local SR : 
# xe pbd-unplug uuid=`cat Uuid.txt | egrep "*-*-*-*-*" `
# xe sr-forget uuid=`cat SR-Uuid.txt | egrep "*-*-*-*-*" `
# Create the new Local SR : 
# xe sr-create content-type=user device-config:device=`cat Device.txt` host-uuid=`cat HostUuid.txt` name-label=Local\ storage shared=false type=ext

stormi

Of course, move the VMs out of the SR before destroying it

dariosplit

@peder Dosen't work. My version is 8.1 Build date: 2020-02-19 and reciveed the resoult " Name: Local storage Type: Ext3."

Danp

@dariosplit What exactly doesn't work? Where did you receive that output?

dariosplit

@Danp I got Ext3 again instead of Ext4.

stormi

@dariosplit said in XCP-ng 8.1 Release Candidate now available!:

@Danp I got Ext3 again instead of Ext4.

How do you check exactly? (you haven't answered to @Danp's "Where did you receive that output?")