@Andrew Gggrrr...you know what's funny about your response?...I was actually just in the Advanced tab and glossed right over that! hahaha Thanks Andrew

Upon VM creation, you can boot to ISO. But, I forgot my pwd and want to just reinstall Windows. I hit ESC to get to UEFI BIOS config, but there isn't an option in the Boot Order for the CD Drive to move it to first in the list so the VM will boot to it upon reboot. Soooo...how do I boot to CD (ISO) Drive?
Thanks!

@manilx Well...kinda yes, kinda no. The "easiest" woulda been the ability to import a VM onto a XCP Host directly. Done. My main concern was running the same XO at the same time and losing some configs. Key is don't do any configs/changes in original when doing this. I don't see this task as a common one though. This is a rare process imo. General XO V2V and OVA Import processes are decent....not sure how they were early on..maybe a few kinks needed worked out? Actually, some residual kinks still need worked out. For example, when importing non-legacy OSes, it appears XO defaults the migrated/imported VM to legacy BIOS. This is a problem as it causes the VM to not boot. Easy fix of course in the VM's Advanced tab, but this should be an option during the migration process. Not sure why it happens, but detaching an ISO to a newly migrated/imported VM doesn't work until you power down the VM completely, then power it on. Subsequent attach/detach attempts are then fine. Anyway...things like that should be addressed if/where possible.

@manilx - really appreciate all the responses/assist though. I will no doubt have more questions/feature requests as I move forward. Regardless, I do like this product as a VMW alternative. I never needed and don't need all the "bells & whistles" of VMW (Distributed Switches, vSAN, NSX, etc). Just the "basics" are all I need -> stable hypervisor, live migration & load balancing, ease of updating, HA, ease of storage procurement, and ease of Pool (Cluster) mgmt, and the main one...good backup mgmt (i.e. Veeam support!). Again..testing I've done so far...XCP/XO is doing ok
Best!

Ok...so this is what I ended up doing:

I powered down my orig XO VM, then exported it as an OVA from VMW. I then powered my orig XO VM back on and imported the XO OVA file through it and powered it on. As I did with other Linux VMs, I had to make a few changes on it - I had to change the BIOS setting from BIOS (legacy) to UEFI so it could then boot up; I also had to change the NIC name in Netplan so it could pick up an IP. I discussed these issues in another post I had
https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/10736/import-vm-from-vmware-a-few-issues-lnx-boot-issue-no-ip-in-lnx-cd-rom-eject-error/4

After the imported OVA XO VM was able to then boot ok and hit the network, I powered down my orig XO VM and logged into XO-Lite on the Host the imported XO VM was on and did the rest of what I needed -> change the NIC name in Netplan and install Guest Tools. After doing those things and a reboot, I was good to go.

Even though I was able to do this, it is a bit klunky. It would be highly beneficial if there was a way to do an Import of a VM onto a XCP Host directly in XO-Lite. Would that be something that's possible? I'm sure it would be rare to have to need to do this (lab env, or like me...I needed to import my XO VM), but I think this would still be a worthwhile feature.

Thanks for all the responses and assists!

@manilx Also...I just thought there would be conflicts with the current XO Pool if I don't disconnect/remove 1 of my XCP Hosts from it. I do understand I can create a XO VM on it while in a Pool, but I would need to add some Host to this new XO. And, when doing so, the Host I add has its own Pool in XO, so I thought there would be confict with this added XCP Host having 2 Pool configs in 2 XO instances - 1 in the orig XO and now in a new XO. There is no clear-cut info (details) on this.....that was my only concern.

I had to step away for a bit..so let me give this a go.

@olivierlambert I'll ask for an update in the Forums post and see what they say...

@olivierlambert NICE! Great to hear Olivier. I follow your Forums post...but there really hasn't been much traction on Veeam's end of late. Altho..they have been a bit busy with their Sales KO and a VeeamON Conference of late

Looking fwd to see what they come up with. I'd be the 1st to give it a test run. Heck, as part of their Veeam100 crew, maybe they'd even be willing to share their BETA with me?

@manilx ha...ok "manilx"...will give it a go. Thanks for chiming in. Really appreciate it

@manilx Yes...remove a Host. This is a test environment. Both of the 2 XCP Hosts I have are already in a Pool within my orig XO VM. So yes...I would need to remove 1 Host (slave) from the Pool in there to be able to add some Host to the new XO VM, right? I can't have a XCP host in a Pool within 1 XO and add it to a 2nd XO can I?

@manilx am I overthinking? Maybe...but again, I am new to xenserver in general (not virtualization tho).

I guess I could. To deploy a temp XO I'd have to remove 1 of my XCP Hosts from my pool in my current XO to be able to add it to the temp XO; import my orig XO VM then remove that XCP Host from the temp; power on my imported (old) XO VM on the now standalone XCP Host then re-add the XCP Host back to the original XO Pool. I had mentioned initially if there was no way to do what I'm wanting..I asked if creating a new XO and importing the configs of my orig XO was the way to go. Maybe do that?

@Danp Hey Dan...thanks for the response. Care to share how to import it on XCP? I can for sure create the OVA...no prob there. I just haven't seen in any docs about importing an OVA into XCP directly; only in XO? Is it in the "xenserver" documentation maybe?
Appreciate it.

Hey everyone..maybe I've overlooked it in some of the documentation, but I'm not seeing a way to migrate a VMW VM over to an XCP-NG host WITHOUT XO. I can do this with XO no probs (have done a handful so far to test; not too bad, btw). But, I need to do this task from ESXi or vCenter > XCP-NG (no XO in between). Reason no XO? My XO VM is the one I want to migrate
I created my XO VM in my VMW infrastructure initially. I've been playing around with XO/XCP a few wks now off/on. I now want to get everything on the XCP side just on XO/XCP and to do that I need to migrate my XO VM to one of my XCP-NG hosts. Is there a way to do so? I didn't see an option in XO Lite. I thought there was a cmd line way, but the only one I've seen is the XO cmd line (xo-cli vm.import##... ).
If there is no way, is my only option to create a new XO VM on one of my XCP hosts and just import the config from my original XO VM? That would stink if so.
Thanks!

@nathanael-h Hey...thanks for the response Nathanael. Yeah...the "customization specification" policies is an old VMware feature that's been around pretty much as long as VMware has. To be clear, it's a vCenter feature not an ESXi Host feature.
It's kind of a 'policy wizard' where you configure all those things I mentioned above. Then, when you create a VM from a Template, you have the option to 'modify the OS' (which means to apply a customization specificatin policy) upon deployment. It's very convenient!

Hmm...maybe someone else can chime in on suggestions. I'd rather not go through the headache of what you suggest if I don't have to...mostly cuz I'm not a developer and don't do github...mostly at all. *shrugs

I'm testing out XCP-NG and XO to see if it's something we can migrate to for our prod VM environment. As of now, it's a "no" mainly because you all don't integrate with Veeam Backup. But, I'm hearing this may be coming... *fingers crossed

Is there a function/feature in XO (I use 'from Sources) to create a new Windows VM from a Windows Template that allows you to create a new SID during the VM creation process similar to what VMware does? In VMW you can run a "customization specification" policy when creating a new VM from Template with various settings -> local admin password, IP assignment, domain name, VM name, run sysprep or create a new SID, windows licensing info. The idea of course is to not have a similar SID for the newly created cloned VM. It would be nice to auto-add it to AD as well like you can with VMware.

If there is no such feature, are there plans to have something like this in a future XO release? Thanks.

@gduperrey
Ok, thank you. Appreciate the explanation.

After adding a XCP host (host2) to be a slave of another XCP host (host1) in XO (up to date as of 25 Apr), Host2 takes on the password of the Host1 Master when connecting via SSH? Why is this? I don't recall reading about this in the XO documentation. IMO, seems to be a security issue here. Thoughts?

@olivierlambert Ok, will do. Thanks!

@olivierlambert No problem at all. I'm documenting as I go. I have some feature requests I think should be added to XO to make it more intuitive. How do I go about doing that? Create a post here or submit somewhere else?
Thanks.

UPDATE: I see in the XO docs on how to:
https://beta.xen-orchestra.com/docs/community.html#feature-requests
Seems it's best to do so here with relevant info. I'll do it in batches so as not to overload on volume of posts

@olivierlambert -
I have resolved the CD device eject error/issue...by guessing To resolve the above error, for any VMware VM that is either migrated (V2V) into XO or imported (via .ova file), do the following:

1. After migration or import, power the VM on if not already.
2. Resolve the NIC issue (for Linux; see the Netplan discussion above) and verify the VM (Windows and Linux) attain an IP
3. Install the XO Guest Tools for Windows downloaded from the Citrix site and via install cmd for Linux (Ubnt = sudo apt install xe-guest-utilities -y) and reboot the VM(s)
4. Once the VM is up and you confirm Tools is installed, simply power down the VM, then power it back on. For Windows VMs, if an ISO was connected when shutting down, it will be disconnected upon startup. You can test connect and disconnect an ISO and it should eject fine; for Linux, if an ISO was connected when shutting down, it will still be connected, but you should now be able to eject the ISO.
5. Also note, I had the mount error in Linux VMs with the /dev/cdrom as well, but that error also gets resolved after performing the VM shutdown

Thanks!

I was able to find a post which discussed the known NIC issue in Linux imported VMs (by Brandon Lee):
https://www.virtualizationhowto.com/2024/02/migrate-from-vmware-to-xcp-ng-a-vsphere-admins-perspective/

It kinda makes sense I guess why this happens -> the NIC is given a static name in Netplan initially when the VM is created. When the VM is migrated/imported into XO, this Netplan NIC name is NOT changed in the Netplan .yml file during migration, thus the OS can't get an IP. To rectify this, change the name XO gives the NIC in the Linux OS (eth0 for Ubnt2204 or enX0 for Ubnt2404) in the .yml file, reboot the VM, then you'll be able to get an IP if you use DHCP. You can then also install Guest Tools by using a pkg mgr (apt for Ubnt).

The only remaining problem I'm having now is the CD eject issue. And again..this is on both imported Linux and Windows VMs.