@florent said in Our future backup code: test it!:

@john.c the backup on tape is still on the roadmap but won't be for this step

The main change is that we'll have to rework part of the code to ensure we write data sequentially + the management tools ( which backup is on which tape )

You can try the FS on tape , but the performance penalty is heavy

Even if its not part of this rewrite some of what I wrote is my idea or view as to how it could be implemented later on. So that it's implemented in a way, that permits people who don't need tape back ups to still have small Xen Orchestra instances. But at the same time enable those who use tape backups, to have the capacity and an appropriately sized Xen Orchestra.

So is it this new backup code which the tape back up support will be plugging into?

If so I have been thinking may be have it when doing the tape backup support, get the XOA to install the packages when required after prompting the user. Also have xo-server instruct the creation of a new disk image for attaching to xoa. The new disk image would act as storage or cache for the extra data used by tape drive backups.

The tape drive related software wouldn't be installed by default, unless specified as such during deployment with the XOA deploy tool. But instead installed at user request, by selecting to use tape backup destination when setting up back up job, clicking on the shim widget about tape backups or restoring from an online Vates account backup of XOA settings.

@DustinB said in "Block migraton" option on the VM´s Advanced tab:

@abudef The English translation is meant to be "Prevent Migration".

I think some lines were crossed ha.

I agree it really needs to actually read "Prevent Migration", that will then make it pretty clear.

@Statitica said in Install XCP-ng in old HP ProLiant DL160 G6 (gen 6):

@john.c Thanks!

Not quite the update I was hoping for, but it's another good step in the right direction...

The disk image (VDI) size limit meant that you couldn't have disks attached, to a VM which is larger than 2TB. This limitation was due to the use of the VHD (not VHDX) format for the disks, prior to 8.3 LTS.

Serious problems then occurred if you went over this limit, ones that couldn't be corrected (or at least easily). But the 2TB limit could be worked around, though a fix was sought and is now in development and testing, which will correct it.

On top of this Vates are refactoring and/or updating the Xen Orchestra backup feature code to be able to cope with this limitation being removed, as well as the qcow2 format.

@Statitica said in Install XCP-ng in old HP ProLiant DL160 G6 (gen 6):

@ilu said in Install XCP-ng in old HP ProLiant DL160 G6 (gen 6):

@nick.lloyd Thankyou...i'll try the last version, reading forums people says HP was problematic, thats why i was asking for help.

Runs fine on my HP hardware, and was pretty easy to install.

@john.c said in Install XCP-ng in old HP ProLiant DL160 G6 (gen 6):

@ilu Though note that XCP-ng 8.3.0 when it goes LTS, will be getting a fix for the 2TB VDI limit. This will allow you to handle VMs which have large, disks.

You have a source for this? IIRC, the fix the the 2TB limit will fix a few other storage limitations too so I'm keen to know more.

https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/03/14/the-future-of-xcp-ng-lts/

@ilu Though note that XCP-ng 8.3.0 when it goes LTS, will be getting a fix for the 2TB VDI limit. This will allow you to handle VMs which have large, disks.

Plus this 8.3.0 version is also equipped with XO Lite, useful for single pool as a light weight environment. Though just using Xen Orchestra will be a step up from using VMware ESXi version 5.1, due to it being an appliance.

Plus with it open source nature this software stack, will be a great home for the VMs.

If your asking as a company I would seriously recommend looking into Vates VMS, it will be a very useful base for professional support. As well as supporting the continued development of this great and outstanding virtualisation stack, as well as its open source code.

Also you'll find this works great with your up to date systems as all of the interfaces are HTML5 based no flash present.

@olivierlambert said in 8.3 Cannot boot from CD Rom:

Can you try with another ISO from, I don't know, Ubuntu or another OS? This is really a basic thing, I don't understand why such simple operation doesn't work for you

What if @escape222 were to try doing it from the NetInst image of Debian Linux 12.9.0 and see if that one boots (in case there's an issue with 12.10.0)? As the 12.10.0 is a new point release, they can always then afterwards do a "apt upgrade" to apply the updates from the point release.

Then if the Debian Linux version 12.9.0 NetInst image does successfully boot, then there may be an issue worth reporting in the 12.10.0 point release.

@olivierlambert said in Our future backup code: test it!:

No change in feature in the end, however the problem with LVM could be easily solved with "Instant restore" feature, coming somewhere in 2025.

Thanks for the reply and all of your company's hard work. When the date gets closer I'll let the Linux System Administration lecturer know about using VMs via XCP-ng, XOA and Instant Restore.

Yes it definitely looks really good. Will it be able to perform File Level restore, on multiple disk images in LVM LVs in a LVM VG on a single VM?

The reason being a lecturer on a Linux System Administration course, who's lecturing based on experience. The lecturer's experience is from over 30 Years of System Administration at a wide variety of Corporations including the Fortune 500.

During the course the lecturer has the student's setup VMs using LVM based drive pools for storage. Then have them learn how to add more drives to the LVM VG and increase the size of LVM LV and the filesystem formatted on the logical volume.

If the current and proposed backup engine can't support File Level restore on LVM could it be added please?

@kagbasi-ngc said in Using Multiple Servers in LDAP Plug-in:

@john.c Thanks for the suggestion - I'm exploring this option.

Oh, forgot a bit of follow up. You can also do something similar with Linux. Using the clustering software configured for failover and also a Samba server. The Samba server needs to be at minimum version 4.0, though to be supported with updates version 4.20 at minimum, to guarantee a long period of support either 4.21 or 4.22.

Though using the in box Samba server from RHEL 9 is best as its supported by Red Hat and is version 4.15. Though you can select another Linux distribution which is new enough to support at minimum the same version of Samba.

Then run the process of setting up the Samba Server as an Active Directory Domain Controller.

https://wiki.samba.org/index.php/Setting_up_Samba_as_an_Active_Directory_Domain_Controller

Also with Windows Server based solution, you can add more servers to the AD Failover Cluster as required. So effectively you could even have 3-5 AD domain controllers, instead of just the 2 AD Controllers for redundancy.

@olivierlambert said in Intel Flex GPU with SR-IOV for GPU accelarated VDIs:

Entering a big vendor program is probably 100 or 1000 times harder to grabbing a GPU ourselves. Now, the challenge is finding one in stock in EU.

Maybe but the value out of it being able to access information, as well as easy access to people at Intel would pay for itself. As well as access to up coming products, to use for testing. Also would make accessing the card easier as, currently you need to buy a solution from a builder that uses the card.

@jrouerdc Have you read the https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2025/03/14/the-future-of-xcp-ng-lts/ blog post yet? Evaluating, planning and potentially using XCP-ng version 8.3 would be a very good idea. This because the LTS release of 8.3 will have the 2TB VDI disk limit removed, also an extensive support lifecycle compared to 8.2.

@olivierlambert Another option is possibly applying for Intel Developer Zone Premier. At this level they provide hardware testing support, I'm not sure if this means they can ship their hardware to companies to test against.

But if that's the case then you could then get the Intel Flex GPU and their other products ahead of time. As well as a closer connection to Intel for any issues, which come up involving XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra.

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/programs/overview.html#gs.ko8q8e

@kagbasi-ngc said in Using Multiple Servers in LDAP Plug-in:

@Davidj-0 Thanks for the admonition. I was more concerned about the single point of failure that seems to be inherent with the plugin only allowing a single LDAP/AD server to be specified. As I mentioned to @pdonias , most of our environments (and in my lab) are setup with at least 2 domain controllers, where the Windows systems already leverage them natively.

For the Linux systems we have, which are integrated into AD using SSSD, there's the DNS lookups that happen which essentially protects against the kind of failure I experienced in the lab (where someone accidentally disabled the NIC on the DC that happened to be configured in the LDAP Plugin in XO). Even though the DC was still reachable over it's management interface, authentication into XO was now broken until I discovered it.

You can prepare failover clusters of Active Directory servers, using Windows Server Failover Cluster features. The cluster has its own, FQDN which can be used with the plugin. This will work under Linux and Windows a like. Also more vanilla, no modifications to SSSD required, will thus be included in the backups of settings on the appliance, and the account synchronisation feature of XOA.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/configure-ad-accounts
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/failover-clustering/create-failover-cluster?pivots=powershell

@jcharles said in How to Use xo-cli to Get network=<XCP_Network_UUID> and sr=<XCP_SR_UUID> for vm.importFromEsxi Command?:

Thanks that worked. I give that a go thanks

Your welcome.

@jcharles said in How to Use xo-cli to Get network=<XCP_Network_UUID> and sr=<XCP_SR_UUID> for vm.importFromEsxi Command?:

yes we have vmware vcenter but V2V does not interface with that.

thanks

Actually it does with the current stable (or latest) update with the appropriate channel when using XOA. The host IP field can refer to ESXi Host but can also be the IP address of the VMware vCenter Server.

Just note that it may only include VMs present in the VMware vCenter Server's inventory. Any not currently registered may not be included.

@jcharles said in How to Use xo-cli to Get network=<XCP_Network_UUID> and sr=<XCP_SR_UUID> for vm.importFromEsxi Command?:

The vm guests are located on hundreds of different esxi hosts in a large number of different data centres. At the moment the V2V only allows a single esxi host login at a time which limits the number of vm guests I can setup and process.

I get the feeling the xo-cli will not supply the information I need for my script. Do you have a powershell module for xcp-ng like VMware powercli which gives you the ability to write very complex scripts.

Thanks

Do you have VMware vCenter Server (VCSA)?

@jcharles said in How to Use xo-cli to Get network=<XCP_Network_UUID> and sr=<XCP_SR_UUID> for vm.importFromEsxi Command?:

Hi,
Yes I have used that but it is a GUI and I have thousands of VM guests to migrate from Vmware to xcp-ng. So I would like to write a script to migrate the using the xo-cli vm.importFromEsxi. I am new to xcp-ng as getting this type of information is very easy in vmware with it powershell powercli. I have tied the following code but it gets multiple UUID's.

Define variables for pool name and VLAN

$poolName = "Dev-Pool" # Replace with your pool name
$vlan = 8 # Replace with your VLAN ID

Load the JSON data

$jsonData = xo-cli list-objects | ConvertFrom-Json -AsHashTable

Find the pool UUID based on the pool name

$poolUUID = ($jsonData | Where-Object { $.type -eq "pool" -and $.name_label -eq $poolName }).uuid

Find the SR UUID associated with the pool

$srUUID = ($jsonData | Where-Object { $.type -eq "VDI" -and $.'$pool' -eq $poolUUID }).'$SR'

Find the Network UUID associated with the VLAN and pool

$networkUUID = ($jsonData | Where-Object { $.type -eq "PIF" -and $.vlan -eq $vlan -and $_.'$pool' -eq $poolUUID }).'$network'

Output the results

Write-Output "SR UUID: $srUUID"
Write-Output "Network UUID: $networkUUID"

@Danp Perhaps this is an area where V2V can be improved, if it doesn't have it already. The ability to setup a batch migration of VMs where it can handle hundreds, to thousands at the same time.

@jcharles said in How to Use xo-cli to Get network=<XCP_Network_UUID> and sr=<XCP_SR_UUID> for vm.importFromEsxi Command?:

Hi, I want to script the migration of vmware to xcp-ng. As the estate of xcp-ng grows it will make looking up the information more and more complicated,

Thanks

Have you checked out V2V (VMware to Vates) present in Xen Orchestra yet? It will perform this migration process for you, catching and dealing with any gotcha's along the way. People have been finding and reporting them for several years now, then Vates updates the feature to fix.

Also Xen Orchestra integrates currently with NetBox software as a source of truth for the network.

https://docs.xcp-ng.org/installation/migrate-to-xcp-ng/#xo-v2v

@olivierlambert @DustinB @Forza May I suggest that it goes a bit further, unless it already does so. Can the VMs in Xen Orchestra show if it was backed up successfully in the most recent job. As well as when it was last backed up, if you happen to not have the report yet (or read it) you can see at a glance. That way it makes decoding the orange status for the backup job easier, so you know which ones you need to do a backup job run for.

Alternatively show which ones failed and were successful, when you get the details for the job (task) in Xen Orchestra following an orange status on Xen Orchestra 6.

@michael-manley Switching to Avalonia and .Net 8.0.0 LTS with some additional work meeting any additional requirements, will enable it to be useable on MacOS. You could even get it listed in Apple's Mac OS App store software so people can download it straight to their macs and then benefit from the security and auto-update technologies.

https://developer.apple.com/macos/submit/