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

tjkreidl We don't need performance, but we do need to test how XCP-ng pools, networking, migration, live migration, backup, import from VMware and so on work. It's just a playground where we can have relatively many XCP-ng hosts, but it's not about performance, it's about efficiency and low requirements, because it's just a playground where we learn, validate how things work, and prepare the process for the final migration from VMware to XCP-ng. We originally had two R630s ready for this, then 4, but that would have been unnecessary, given the power consumption, to have physical hypervisors, so in the end we decided to virtualize it all. Well, on ESXi it's because XCP-ng works seamlessly there in nested virtualization.

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)"
}

So it looks like it was a browser cache problem, solved by deleting it.

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

Greg_E Please try restarting the toolstack once more.

The update went fine and everything is working fine.

gduperrey said in XCP-ng 8.3 updates announcements and testing:

xapi: Re-enabled nested virtualization in 8.3, with the same limitations as in 8.2.

Since I keep bothering with nested virtualization here on the forum, I of course immediately tried the support in 8.3

Setup:

• HW XCP-ng 8.3
• • Nested XCP-ng 8.3
• • • Windows Server 2025
• • • Debian 12.9

Windows installation on the nested hypervisor went ok and the system seems to be working fine.
The problem occurred with Debian. ISO 12.9 netistall, UEFI was used. The system boots up and shows the notorious install screen: Graphic install, Install ... Regardless of the type of installation chosen, immediately after starting it, nested hypervisor XCP-ng 8.3 crashes and reboots. By the way, this problem with Debian is also on VMware - if I use nested XCP-ng 8.3 there, the Debian installation crashes it just the same.

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

The array was created later after installation manually using unused disks. And then it was connected in the normal way as a local SR using XO.

It would be nice if it would also handle the state of other mdamd RAID arrays. After all, the All mdadm RAID are healthy message kind of predetermines it

qemu-img convert disk_image_fixed.vhd -O vpc -o subformat=dynamic disk_image_dynamic.vhd

olivierlambert said in Automatic startup and shutdows VMs at the specified time:

Hi,

That should be doable with the "job" section of XO.

Yeah, that's exactly it, thank you very much, I missed it somehow. I'll check the documentation for details.

Solved by 583c728