@olivierlambert Thanks for the good news!

I've used VMware for years. ESXi as a server hypervisor and VMware Workstation Pro on the desktop. Even for some labs and test environments I got by with the free version of ESXi with limited APIs. The new licensing policy does not suit me and my companions at all and as a bonus Broadcom has cut the free version of ESXi. Bravo! I think Broadcom should get the award for best marketing of XCP-ng, H-V, Citrix etc. for 2024

On desktops, I need to keep VMware Workstation Pro for many reasons. That's why I was impressed by the videos @lawrencesystems made about XCP-ng & Xen Orchestra. The capabilities that are close to vSphere and vCentre, the ability to import and export VMDK so easily through XO blew me away. And to top it all off, transferring VMDK disks through XO works noticeably faster than migrating VMs between VMw WS and ESXi!

Great, it's working fine now

To conclude this: @florent and I discussed the issue in a private conversation. I provided the vmdk file that was causing the problem. It turned out that the problem was caused by the vmdk thin file from VMware Workstation Pro, which has a slightly different structure than the vmdk files on ESXi hypervisors. Currently XO imports these files fine and the problem can be considered solved. Thank you very much @florent for your cooperation and help.

That's exactly it, thank you

@stormi That's not quite what I meant. The point is that if the host is 8.3/4.17, then virtualization is not working on its guest and therefore no other nested guest can be started on this guest. And actually, yes, if 8.3/4.17 appears somewhere in the cascade of nested hosts, then nested virtualization will no longer work on its guest.

But I have a suspicion that it hasn't worked since the last or second to last batch of updates for XCP-ng, that it worked before.

Hello,
on XCP-ng host v. 8.3 (latest updates), I created an XCP-ng 8.3 virtual machine using the CentOS 7 template and enabled Nested virtualization. However, XO shows a "Hardware-assisted virtualization is not enabled on this host" alert and the nested virtual machine cannot be started on the virtualized host.

vm.start
{
  "id": "b2b6c96b-f6c8-a99c-5e72-d6cd1b123022",
  "bypassMacAddressesCheck": false,
  "force": false
}
{
  "errors": [
    "xcp-ng-brxbamkk: VM_HVM_REQUIRED(OpaqueRef:e0855019-e6dd-595d-648c-62872961b97f)"
  ],
  "code": "NO_HOSTS_AVAILABLE",
  "params": [],
  "message": "NO_HOSTS_AVAILABLE()",
  "name": "Error",
  "stack": "Error: NO_HOSTS_AVAILABLE()
    at Xapi._startVm (file:///opt/xo/xo-builds/xen-orchestra-202404302058/packages/xo-server/src/xapi/index.mjs:909:11)
    at Xapi.startVm (file:///opt/xo/xo-builds/xen-orchestra-202404302058/packages/xo-server/src/xapi/index.mjs:948:7)
    at Api.#callApiMethod (file:///opt/xo/xo-builds/xen-orchestra-202404302058/packages/xo-server/src/xo-mixins/api.mjs:366:20)"
}

@DustinB said in Cannot import ISO file:

What version number were you at before (while it wasn't working) and when you downgraded what version were you at?

Now I tried again and it still doesn't work in commit 1b5157e, but it works in 0ccfd4b. I didn't check which specific commit introduced the problem with the self signed certificate.

@Danp Yeah, that's exactly it! After downgrading to an older commit the import works just fine! Just like here: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/8618/restoring-from-backup-error-self-signed-certificate/23

@planedrop In general, the fact is that the current XCP-ng 8.3 RC1 and XenServer 8 simply do not support any kind of nested virtualization. For example, when I want to try a mock setup of say 5 hypervisors, I just don't buy or dedicate 5 hw servers and rather make virtualized hypervisors. And for the record, I'm referring to the lab environment for debugging configurations and scenarios, not production.

P. S.: In more legacy Xen, which is part of XCP-ng 8.2, nested virtualization works.

P. P. S.: https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/8932/hardware-assisted-virtualization-is-not-enabled-on-this-host-even-though-platform-exp-nested-hvm-true-is-set

@florent Can you please provide some summary on backup setup versus compression versus remotes configuration?

@frank-s This confirms my observations and tests that for compression to be active, data blocks must be enabled for remote.

@frank-s Do you have the "data block" option enabled for remote or not?

(The idea behind is to have both a compressed delta backup (the backup repository itself is backed up to another location via vpn, so the size of the backup matters) and the fastest possible restore option.)

In addition, I have verified that if the option "Store backup as multiple data blocks instead of a whole VHD file" is enabled, the restore from the data blocks structure takes about 2-3 longer than from the .vhd if this option is disabled (I tested the health check restore).

At least the first backup, i.e. the full backup (and maybe every key full backup milestone later) does not look like it is compressed. If the "Store backup as multiple data blocks instead of a whole VHD file" option is off, a .vhd of 116 GiB is stored, if it is on, the whole data block structure is only 67 GiB.

If I understand correctly, for compression to work for Incremental (Delta) backup, remote storage must have the option "Store backup as multiple data blocks instead of a whole VHD file" enabled, otherwise vhd files are stored without compression. Is that right?

@olivierlambert said in Compressed backups:

Compression is enabled by default for incremental backups.

Hi, if I configure Delta Backup and run a backup for the first time, a full backup of the affected virtual machines is performed. This initial full backup is also compressed?

@abudef said in Managing disks and storage in the XO GUI:

create a RAID 5

Or rather ZFS, but I guess it doesn't matter, it's more about the GUI management option in general...

Sure, for example I have 4 disks in my host server ready for local storage. I would like to list them in the GUI and create a RAID 5 from them, without having to connect to the host server console and use the mdadm tool. And I would like to select this RAID to create local storage again by selecting it without having to specify the device path.