Is it possible to prioritize the booting of certain VMs over another when xcp-ng starts?

[kevdog]

Hi currently running xcp-ng 8.2 and within my small form factor I have 4 VMs. One of the VMs is currently virtualized pfsense. When xcp-ng boots I'd actually like the pfsense VM to start first. Is it possible to assign in XO or through the xcp-ng CLI itself the proposed boot order of the various VMs?

[tjkreidl]

@kevdog Through HA you can prioritize certain VMs to get preference to bring up as a group, but I do not believe there is an easy way to specify specific priorities for individual VMs. See also https://docs.xenserver.com/en-us/xencenter/current-release/pools-ha-restartsettings.html
That said. a delay option may be a possibility. See: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/1312/vm-start-delay-does-it-work-yet/5

[Ajmind 0]

I am using the vapp approach with XCP-NG Center. All VMs are put in one group and I have set a fixed start order and delay for each VM.

I think it should be possible to setup this also via Cli but I havbe not done this myself.

[dave.opc]

Try this in every VM's advanced tab in XO

[rjt]

@dave-opc
"vm start delay - does it work yet?" says that that "start_delay" is the xe appliance list delay time before starting the next vm in the appliance list. In XenCenter and XCPcenter, these are known as "vApps". In X*Center, Right click on the name of a pool, and choose "Manage vApps". The term "Appliance" is not the best word because the use case case is starting a fleet of VMs, but appliance means singular. Optionally, the order and wait time of starting the VMs in an "Appliance" can be set and that is where "start_delay" comes in.

"XAPI-project Class: VM_appliance start does not document the optional delay between starting each VM in the appliance.

https://xcp-ng.org/forum/post/11881
https://xapi-project.github.io/xen-api/classes/vm_appliance.html#start

I updated and rebooted our hosts more often when I used vApps, so would very much like to see this part of XOA.

[rjt]

@rjt Note to self about creating and managing appliances at xe cli.
xe help --all | egrep -i '(appliance)' # find xe appliance related commands.

• appliance-assert-can-be-recovered,
• appliance-create,
• appliance-destroy,
• appliance-list,
• appliance-param-clear,
• appliance-param-get,
• appliance-param-list,
• appliance-param-set,
• appliance-recover,
• appliance-shutdown,
• appliance-start,