Migrate from XenServer 6.5 to XCP-ng 8.2
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Good Day,
We're in a bit of a pickle. We need to upgrade our hypervisors from XenServer 6.5 to the latest version of XCP-ng, but without losing any data or changing the partition scheme. After a bit of digging, we read in the XCP-ng documentation that this is possible, along with instructions of how to do so. To test this process, we:
- Inserted into one host machine a DVD with the XCP-ng 8.2 ISO burned onto it, and booted up the machine into this DVD
- Followed along with the installation prompts until it searched for any present XenServer installation (host, guests, etc.). It should have found the existing installation, but instead reported the following:
"Only product installations that cannot be upgraded have been detected. Continuing will result in a clean installation, all existing configuration will be lost. Alternatively, please contact a Technical Support Representative for the recommended upgrade path."
We based this process on what we read here: https://docs.xcp-ng.org/installation/upgrade/#-upgrade-from-xenserver
- we heeded the warnings within this section
Is there something about this process that we do not understand? My current assumption is that the process of upgrading consists of: insert media that has the XCP-ng ISO, follow its prompts and it should detect what is present. Our goal is to upgrade from XenServer 6.5 to XCP-ng 8.2.1 without losing our current guest VMs or changing their partition scheme.
Assistance is appreciated, as we use XCP-ng on other hosts and truly favor it above XenServer.
Thanks,
Chris -
Hi... I know that there are previous discussions on this forum where others have performed this same task. Here is one example that you may want to review. Why are you wanting to maintain the old partition scheme?
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@hris-stone said in Migrate from XenServer 6.5 to XCP-ng 8.2:
Only product installations that cannot be upgraded have been detected.
See this thread for a similar issue.
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@anp The guy who set the VMs up doesn't want to risk losing any data, as they operate 24/7 and many are customer-facing. If I'm not mistaken, this wouldn't be a problem if we made backups, but he wants to do everything possible to maintain what we have as much as possible, and minimize downtime.
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- Do backup first in any case (better safe than sorry)
- Go to XS 7.1 first
- Then to XCP-ng 8.2.1
Also, if it's production, might worth to have support from the editor…
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I had to do an upgrade similar to this and the recommendations from @livierlambert are pretty much what I had to do with a few additions. I had the same problem due to the difference in partitioning between XS6.5 and XS7.1 (which is also used by XCP-ng 8.2) and it was being reported as "cannot be upgraded" as yours is.
This machine's SR was on the local storage and what I ended up having to do was move all of my VMs on this system to a new on-line storage SR (NFS v3 in my case), mark the system as safe to upgrade using the instructions here, then perform the upgrade. Removing the local storage SR once it's empty may also help. In my case, the upgrade kept the NFS SR and all VMs on it intact and I was able to move them back to a local storage SR afterwards.
I'd still recommend upgrading to XS7.1 first as @livierlambert suggests.
One more thing you may need to deal with is possible compatibility problems between the version of XS drivers and agents running on guest systems, especially older versions of Windows. I've had problems with some of the older drivers crashing the guest VMs (not the host) when trying to run under newer versions of XS or XCP-ng. It might be a good idea to either upgrade them or remove them before migrating or upgrading to a newer server.
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Have you ever consider to use a professional VM backup and migration solution, like Veeam and Vinchin? I heard that they perform quite well when delivering such migration process.
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@aurora-chase This is more of an upgrade than a migration, so I don't see how those other products are needed here.
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haha yes, it feels like a hidden plug for those product (I'm not saying it's the case, but just feeling that way).
Also, you can obviously backup your VMs with XO to restore them on a freshly installed (from scratch) XCP-ng 8.2
