Migration from ESXi to XCP server transfer path.
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I am slowly moving ESXi VM images to XCP using XOA. But I have a few questions. When the migration takes place does it move the image directly from host to host? Or does the migration move through the XOA VM?
I have my ESXi on a 20Gb ethernet connection and the XCP-ng-migration server is also bonded to the 20Gb ethernet. However, the XCP-ng-migration is attached to a 1Gb connection with a different interface and IP since it was set up before I created the LACP bond that I put the VMs on. My question is what path that the images take when migrating?
What path does this take to move the VM? Is there a way to speed this up by moving interfaces around?
The LACP bond is what I tell all my fast networks/VLANs to connect through. But I have kept the XCP server on a separate ethernet so I do not lose connectivity as I played with the LACP networks.
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@erlicthemad said in Migration from ESXi to XCP server transfer path.:
I am slowly moving ESXi VM images to XCP using XOA. But I have a few questions. When the migration takes place does it move the image directly from host to host? Or does the migration move through the XOA VM?
I have my ESXi on a 20Gb ethernet connection and the XCP-ng-migration server is also bonded to the 20Gb ethernet. However, the XCP-ng-migration is attached to a 1Gb connection with a different interface and IP since it was set up before I created the LACP bond that I put the VMs on. My question is what path that the images take when migrating?
What path does this take to move the VM? Is there a way to speed this up by moving interfaces around?
The LACP bond is what I tell all my fast networks/VLANs to connect through. But I have kept the XCP server on a separate ethernet so I do not lose connectivity as I played with the LACP networks.
Host to Host, XOA simply is the management infrastructure for the tasks to be tracked. You'll need to remove the VMware tools ahead of the migration, and based on the version of license you have with ESXi you may need to shutdown the VM's to migrate them at all.
Essential licenses and lower don't allow for the live migration, and the process simply fails (but doesn't really say why - as far as I could find).
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I'm not positive, but I was thinking that the data passes through XOA so that the disks could be converted from VMDK to VHD. Let's wait and see what one of the devs has to say about this.
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@DustinB Thanks.
When you say machine to machine you mean going from the XCP-ng servers management interface? In my case, the management interface eth0 was a 1Gb interface while eth2 and eth3 were 10Gb interfaces. I have since changed the management interface to bond0 (20Gb interface). I will have to see if that makes things faster.
So far I have found only the Windows machines need to have the VMware tools removed. All my Ubuntu images just move and work. Followed up by using "apt install xe-guest-utilities" though I have found the label for the ethX changes and requires a bit of fixing in the /etc folder.
I also have found the Citrix drivers need to be used for the Windows 2022 servers or the ethernet interface is stuck at 1Gb. When I use Citrix the drivers show the available interface at 100Gb. I suspect that may be due to the open-source drivers not being updated in a long time. On my Windows 2012 server, the 1Gb interface was acceptable.
It would also seem that if you install the open source drivers and then uninstall them the VM is rendered unbootable. Unable to find the working volume. I think I saw a note about the drivers missing for the open-source drivers causing the issue, the article had a fix of manually loading the drivers off a driver ISO image.
Since I am just using ESXi I just shut down the VM and then migrate. Each one moved well.
Next up once my last VM is moved I will add a DL360 Gen10+ server to the pool and see how the configuration handles this.
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After doing a few migrations and watching the XOA installation it appears that the migration goes thought he XOA device. So there is a benefit to having the XOA running on a fast network interface.
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Its almost certainly goes through XOA. When I was moving from Esxi to XCP-NG I abandoned the process, then beefed up my XOA memory and CPU cores and it sped up marginally. That was a while ago, some of the VM's I had to use Clonezilla on (too large and kept failing). From what Ive read the migration tool has improved dramatically since then.
