I opened a new thread for us to discuss it and for you to provide feedback: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/7464/xcp-ng-8-3-beta

Thanks for all the feedback already provided here, and see you on this new thread!

In order not to miss anything (and, let's be honest, for me to be sure that messages on the new thread reach you all), the best course of action is: open the new thread right now and use the "watch" button.

And let's answer this common and legitimate question: how to upgrade from alpha to beta ? Well, there's nothing to do, just update as usual. In fact, you might already be in beta state. However, as indicated in the blog post, we need a lot of testing of the installer, so it's also an option to start from the installation ISO again.

XCP-ng 8.3 public alpha

@steff22 Are the guest tools that have support for Xcp-ng 8.3 ?

XCP-ng 8.3 does not require a change in the guest tools.

Are probably the drivers for the RTK8125B with which there are some bugs. I get full speed when I install Windows 10 on the Asus PN52.

Changes:

• xcp-ng-release* mostly changes for the imminent new release of installer images
• openvswitch: fix DoS security issue, CVE-2023-1668
• xcp-ng-xapi-plugins: enable installing new packages from Xen Orchestra, and also applying updates from the xcp-ng-linstor repository. This is preliminary work for XOSTOR support in XCP-ng 8.3.
• zstd updated to 1.5.5, which is a bugfix release.

struggling with the network not working. is bad speed without guest tolls not installed and with installed Xcp-ng tools 8.2.2.200 the network hangs and does not exist same with xen guest tools

XCP-ng 8.3 public alpha

@stormi Thanks. I'll cross my fingers for a fix, at some time.

I noticed that /etc/xensource/usb-policy.conf was send back to stock configuration, so I readded my modification to it. I'm not sure, if that's the expected behavior, after the host update + restart.

Yes, it is. I opened this upstream issue about it, but no common decision was reached yet: https://github.com/xapi-project/xen-api/issues/4935

stormi created this issue in xapi-project/xen-api

open Packaging: xapi-core RPM updates overwrite custom user config in usb-policy.conf #4935

I also updated yesterday, on my ODROID H3+. Everything worked as expected.

I noticed that /etc/xensource/usb-policy.conf was send back to stock configuration, so I readded my modification to it. I'm not sure, if that's the expected behavior, after the host update + restart.

Thank you for the latest update .

Update done on an Intel NUC11ATKC4 and a NUC8i5BEH, both are working fine

Are there any planned work related to hot backups of VM's, where a USB device are attached? It's currently not possible.

In the weekend I ended up moving a single container to a alpine image, so I could continue backing up my primary docker VM. But I was hoping to have rolling backup of the alpine VM, too

https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/61091

It's been a while: one specific update I wanted to push together with everything that was ready gave us more trouble than expected, but now it's solved and so I pushed all the updates at once.

Main changes

• xcp-ng-release*: updated repository definitions in /etc/yum.repos.d/xcpng.repo, to add more testing repositories (disabled by default. More about this here - look for "About the new testing repositories"). Warning: If you have any local changes to this file, it won't be overwritten. In this case, look for /etc/yum.repos.d/xcpng.repo.rpmnew after applying the update, and move it over xcpng.repo. This won't change much for you as testers of XCP-ng 8.3, because we're still pushing the updates directly to xcp-ng-base when they are ready for your testing, but there might be the occasional experimental package in some other location - and the updated .repo file with make it easier to pull from there if needed.
• AMD and Intel microcode updates (not the very latest yet, though)
• sm (Storage Manager) ported to python 3 by XenServer, and we rebased our additional storage drivers on it
• XAPI and related components
  • HTTP to HTTPS redirection on the host's web page.
  • lots of changes from upstream. Full changelog.
• IPv6 support added to xha and xsconsole. You'll need to wait for an updated installer in order to test this and the rest of IPv6 support for the management interface.
• memtest86+ updated to 6.20 to support EFI hosts and more hardware. Will be available in the installer.
• xen: better hardware support (Ryzen...), security fixes, bug fixes...
• Other updates synced from the preview release of XenServer 8.3.
• zstd 1.5.4 (1.5.5 soon)
• removed corosync and dlm from installed systems. They were unneeded dependencies for XenServer's clustering support, which is proprietary and thus unsupported on XCP-ng. Let's trim dom0 down slightly.

We also continued our work on the installer and on automating the build of installer ISO images. We'll have new builds for you shortly.

How to update

From an installed XCP-ng 8.3 alpha, just run yum update, and reboot. The usual update rules apply: master host first, etc. Check https://xcp-ng.org/docs/updates.html. I haven't tested it on this update, but XOA's Rolling Pool Update should work on this update.

What to test

Depending on the time available, it goes from "just update and check things still work as expected" to "test everything you can think of", with an intermediate step of "test specific features which are important to you".

Edit: I need to look into the hybrid part of the question. I'm not familiar with this at the moment so not sure what the implications are from that standpoint. Anyway, seems like the experts above already provided an answer on this one.