@olivierlambert

Ok, thanks. Yes I'm eagerly awaiting XCP-ng 9 for testing.

@olivierlambert

Where is this Alma 10 based image? I have a single host that will be freed up in the next week or so, would be internal storage only, but walk before run seems like a good option.

It's an HP T740 with v1756b processor, 16GB of ram, x520-da2 and i226v connections, some size sata drive for OS and a 2tb NVME drive for VM storage.

If things went well, I would convert my 3 host pool in my lab, it's not really doing much but would give a little bigger picture. The host are the same with exception of one is 32GB and the other two are 64GB of ram and they do not have an NVME, NAS storage for those. NFS and SMB is normally what I run from Truenas Scale.

@dinhngtu

How soon do we expect this? I'd like to move my production systems off of the Xenserver versions.

Also, if you are willing to disclose this, how much did it cost? Chris Titus did a video or two on the process for his Windows tools, he got them signed so that fewer complaints would happen when you run them. I don't remember the cost, but it was a few hundred dollars for what he had to do and a lot of hoop jumping to get there.

Working on my lab today, it's been neglected for months and there are things I need to be testing (like these drivers) so tired of this situation where I have no time or ability to work on things I know I need in the future (like Server 2025).

@olivierlambert

The only thing I can think of from newer kernels is NFS options like nconnect=xx for hopefully more speed in the day to day range of duties. As of the pre-LTS, this still wasn't in 8.3. I haven't checked after LTS.

@dinhngtu

I'll try to remember to upgrade a couple on Monday, been meaning to test the latest drivers on some less critical VMs.

@Chemikant784

It's likely that both Microsoft and Xen tools are a combination of the fix, I doubt XCP-ng has anything to do with this issue. And I never had time to check the XCP-ng Guest tools for Windows to see if this happened, but I'm guessing no or not tested. All my hosts are now on XCP-ng 8.3 and I don't see any point in testing 8.2 since it is EOL.

And that said, I'm no farther along in my Server 2025 testing, too many other things going on to think about it right now. If I have time I need to burn the vSphere portion of my lab down and install either Harvester HCI or Windows Server for Hyper-V. Broadcom is just (seemingly) going out of their way to prevent people like me (or us) from learning their products and using them in our labs to further that goal. I've explained this several times to VMUG Advantage managers, but they seem so tied up in clawing out some continuing relationships with Broadcom that they will not "rock the boat". I've said these things in Broadcom webcasts as well, always a run-around with no answers.

Sorry for the rant. All that said, eagerly awaiting XCP-ng 9, unfortunately I think the Alpha or Beta may wait until XO 6 is finished (just a guess). The updated kernel brings with it some storage changes that I really want to test, NFS nconnect=XX being one of them to see if I can get a little better performance to/from the disks. ESXi default was nconnect=4 and the VMs were slightly faster to/from their disks (all thin provisioned). The 4k "block" size and smaller is what I want to improve in all this.

@gduperrey

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.

I got my production system updated yesterday, no issues or oddities with the RPU.

I'm still surprised by how much faster the VMs migrate host to host than they did with 8.2.x, it's like a 4:1 or 5:1 change on my production system. Haven't had time to fool with my lab and see what's what.

@manilx

Once in a while my rpu will do this, then I handle it manually. Been happening more often since the 8.3 upgrade, but not enough to post about it yet since we are only a couple of updates into the LTS. Still watching though and will probably do this patch on wednesday.

@cichy

I mentioned waiting for the management agent because that's already a function of checking your backups, so they have part of that puzzle in place.

@cichy

Best way to implement this from XO would be to wait until the management agent comes up and then move on to the next VMs in the boot order.

I'll have to check out the cli method and see what's involved, there are a few VMs I want to boot in order if the power goes out, things like get the AD VMs up and running so DHCP and DNS are working before other stuff gets booted.

My system is small so I don't have things like the "traditional" LAMP stack with separate application, DB, other VMs so I've never looked into this aspect. But it's right on the surface for VMware and a lot of people are going to be looking for this functionality in one way or another. The VMware drag and drop makes it easy for a Junior level admin to configure a vApp to handle this type of requirement.

@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.

I have not had time to work on this, and my lab changed significantly, had to spend a bunch of money to move it to a new rack and that rack has been disconnected for months so no real work in XCP or vSphere and learning to migrate VMs from vSphere to XCP which was one of my big intentions.

But a recent post confirms that this "oddity" of trying to create a UEFI VM from XO-lite is still present. I'd bet money that this gets fixed before or when the full release is provided. https://xcp-ng.org/forum/topic/11227/boot-new-vm-to-iso-in-xo-lite

Workaround is to either click the button provided to download XOA, or install Linux and XO from sources in BIOS mode. Then you have the full XO to work with to bring everything else up the way you want it. I see it as a minor annoyance right now, not really a bug or problem.

@coolsport00

Also, I have a post somewhere about the UEFI not working from XO-lite, maybe they can be merged?

@coolsport00

Create that first VM as either XOA from the button provided or Linux with XO from sources in BIOS, then log into the full XO and you can set everything else up as UEFI. I think that is the proper workflow until XO 6 and XO-lite hit full feature release. Once we get to full release, I think you'll be able to do everything needed to get up and running on XO-lite, it's come a long way and looks like it will be a nice set up and emergency control point, or maybe a substitute for most of the XO functions.

@coolsport00

Late to the party... Several months ago when I rebuilt my lab, I did everything from XO-lite and the only issue I had back then was that UEFI was not allowed for a VM through the XO-lite interface. It errored out every time. Otherwise I had no issues creating a VM SR on NFS and an ISO SR on SMB all from the web gui in XO-lite or from the host console. I then created a Debian VM in BIOS boot and installed XO sources on it to bring the system all the way up. Pretty sure it was a combination of the XO-lite and host console that got the storage set up, I'd need to go back and look at my notes.

I took multiple screen shots and intended to write up my procedure, by the time I get back to this, things will have changed and XO-lite will have gained new features. I guess when I get back to this I'll have to nuke my lab again and start from fresh installs.

[edit] you can get the host console through the XO-lite interface, so once the OS is installed and networking is created, you are done with IPMI or local keyboard/mouse/video.

@acebmxer I did install the certs, and everything went fine with that. But I never went back to try and install any uefi VMs through XO-Lite. Something I may or may not get back to, should really wipe the system and start fresh again to see how things have advanced.

Things may be changing, and my lab may not have a physical place in my world. Which troubles me because I'll need to model things if this path turns into reality. Lots of unknowns right now.

@johnny

It has been suggested to me to run NUT server on something like a raspberry pi. This lets the pi run for a long time on the UPS, and also to auto boot if the UPS runs out. Then it could wake on LAN other devices after power comes back.

I have not implemented this plan yet, but on my to do list.

@JL457 a coworker was telling me about Intune, if you run Config Manager, there are some settings to let them work together. Not sure exactly what needed to be done, but apparently ours is fixed and ready for someone to learn what's what. Our contract allows some stupidly larger number of clients to be using Intune.

@markr

I'm not certain on the CPU age here, but maybe. If you set up on a newer host with the same OS and everything works, then yes the CPU could be declared as too old.