I finally got my lab updated and the two vms started, so far so good. Stats data is present, the first time I've seen any of my hosts pull 100% CPU. Hosts are little HP T740 thin clients with AMD V1756B processors and 64GB of ram, in a 3 host pool.
Sorry I can't bring more detail, not really doing work on my XCP lab right now, and lots of shake up around tech. space at work.
I decided to burn my lab down because of some trouble and wanted to start fresh to isolate any problems I may have created in the past. Wiped the disks, built a new NFS share ready for work, installed the XCP-ng OS and configured networking for the management interface on the local machines, all normal stuff. Went back to my desk and logged into XO Lite on each machine, using console --> xsconsole I was able to get all the hosts into a pool, and add an ISO and NFS SR, all seemed to work.
Went to the New VM to create a simple Debian vm on which I intended to host XO-CE from sources. Typed the info in, chose the Debian image from my ISO SR, the rest of the config as normal. Uncheck the boot after creation box, and create.
Click on the VM to bring the console up, then click power on... UEFI loader comes up, and ... Can't find the boot disk. Tried another iso that I knew was capable of EFI boot, same.
Realized I was trying to start in EFI, made a new one in BIOS mode, this one worked but now my screen shots are messed up so I'll probably have to go through and delete stuff with a different XO and go back to grabbing images of the process to write up "for the next guy".
Other than this small issue, it's working and doing it all from XO Lite. Yes still a bunch of missing features, but I know you are working on this. I just wanted to try things this way on this fresh build and see what I could get done from local console and XO Lite.
My production pool upgraded fine as far as I can tell, but not so good with the windows drivers, I'll make a thread on the drivers.
Nothing really to add, my 3 host Intel production pool updated just fine. The load balancer is always a little weird, but I'm sure it is calculated based on CPU and RAM assigned to each VM, where I split things up based on workload.
It's a small system, and the real workload is handled by 3 Windows VMs so I tend to split them up onto one of the three hosts.
I may get to my lab in the next couple of days, but it isn't doing work so testing is kind of pointless right now. The only thing "doing work" is a VM with XO from sources.
BTW, the ram increase made zero difference in the VDI migration times.
I may still change the ram for each host in production, but I only have like 12 VMs right now and probably not many more to create in my little system. Might be useful if I ever get down to a single host because of a catastrophe. Currently running what it chose for default at 7.41 MiB, roughly doubled that in my lab to see what might happen.
Just got my VMware lab started so all this other stuff is going to back burner for a while. I will say I like the basic ESXi interface that they give you, I can see why smaller systems may not bother buying VCenter. I hope XO-lite gives us the same amount of function when it gets done (or more).
I was looking for a way to mark this solved, can't find it.
I haven't moved things, but after migrating my big lab to my mini-lab, I'm confident that the warm migration is the way to go. It was fast and seamless as long as you have the right network adapters set up. I had to fool with one of my networks to make a VM function, but that was certainly something I overlooked while setting up the mini-lab. A little testing before moving the VMs should make this go easily if using the old servers is the option for this project.
@coolsport00 You actually referenced my post, so I referenced yours as backup to the condition still being present. I think we just need to wait for them to finish making XO-lite what they seem to intend it to be, I think it's going to be good and I think they are doing a great job so far.
Also, I have a post somewhere about the UEFI not working from XO-lite, maybe they can be merged?
Having what is essentially XCP-NG Center from a browser would be nice, no more need to install something on a Windows machine just to get some basic stuff set up until you get a full XOA instance running. Yes I know you can just grab the demo with a single command, but sometimes you want to configure a few things first.
Tom Lawrence has a bit hub with all the artwork that he uses, you might want to find that and check it out.
On the stuck server, could you warm migrate the vms to one of the other hosts? Or could you shut down a VM at a time and cold migrate them? The second option is certainly not ideal, but maybe?
I'll have to update group policy and check that out, would be a time saver. Everything I use is an Enterprise level of some kind, using EDU in production right now, and Pro/Enterprise evaluation in the lab.
I was looking at running a post imaging script to prevent some of the bloat, but a GPO might be easier.
Just wanted to add a comment:
Thanks for continuing to release the drivers in an ISO. I was having some slowness with the 9.0.9 versions that are currently included with XCP-ng, this is a new Windows 11 25h2 that I'm working with to prototype a workflow in my lab. I just grabbed the 9.1.x ISO from Github and copied it to my ISO SR and installed. There seems to be a slight performance increase in this Win11 VM. That said, 25h2 is horribly bloated with junk, so much so that I think I'm going to need to strip a bunch out before I put this version into production. This might be a condition for MicroWin customization.
Or maybe add a couple of things to the LTSC version (we have licensing for this at work).
200gb free space was enough in my production system to cause this. The only thing I didn't try was filling it up until I found the point where it started working.
Let's say you don't have the metadata backed up... Is there a way to boot from a rescue disk and save the metadata?
I haven't had too much difficulty hitting the esc key in time to get into the EFI config. Click the start VM button, quickly click away from the display area and click in the display area, then toggle the esc key until I see it take effect.
I know I have a couple running at 1920x1080, but that's actually kind of a pain. I only did that to try and get a larger RDP window, RDP may be limited by the original "monitor" resolution, but this might also be fixed in later updates. This one VM has been up for a few years. (edit, yes this has been changed, VMs with a 4x3 monitor now RDP is whatever I have set).
[edit] I just realized this was from 2024.
So far I only have 1 of my 2022 servers changed to the XCP-ng drivers and management agent, the only thing that happened was the NIC went back to DHCP and a short struggle to shift it back to static. I use the e1000 profile when I set up a VM.
This was previously using the Xen 9.4.x drivers downloaded from Xenserver.
The only other glitch is that if you migrate the VM to another host in the pool, the management agent is no longer detected. But additional migrations and rolling pool updates and reboots are not bothered by this. I'm told this will be fixed in the next version.
As far as the drivers themselves, I don't see any issues on this one VM.
I think I have another 2022 in my lab with the XCP-ng stuff installed, I'll have to check later. I've had no issues with it. These were both installed from the new Tools ISO that is default with the latest XCP-ng 8.3.x
I keep hoping to see an Alpha or Beta of XCP-ng 9 soon, but I think there is still a lot of work to be done on the host side and on the Xen Orchestra 6 side.
Going back up to the top of the thread, removing compression was what fixed this for me, and my backups are still saying they are successful (maybe I better check).
I wish there was an easier way to "right size" the storage on these Windows VMs, the suggestion is to copy the VM to a new and smaller "disk" but I haven't looked into what is involved to get this done.
My production pool upgraded fine as far as I can tell, but not so good with the windows drivers, I'll make a thread on the drivers.