Howdy all,

I'm Sam McLeod, an engineer and long time DevOps proponent based in Melbourne, Australia.
I work with an Australian Non-Profit and Charitable Organisation called Infoxchange.

I'm currently moving us from XenServer 7.2 to XenServer 7.6.

I was (still am) on pretty good terms with several people at Citrix's XenServer teams but I was pretty disgusted by the change in free licensing with the release of 7.3 and I'm also the Sam McLeod replying to David here: https://xenserver.org/blog/entry/xenserver-7-3-changes-to-the-free-edition.html

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/s_mcleod
• Website: https://smcleod.net
• GitLab: https://gitlab.com/sammcj
• GitHub: https://github.com/sammcj
• HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mrmondo
• Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/5836466-sam
• LinkedIN: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sammcj/

I'll do whatever testing I can with the limited resources I / my team has at the moment.

I'll update this comment with any tests I perform.

Hardware

• HPE BL460c Gen9, Xeon E5-2690v4, 256GB, Latest firmware (22/05/19), HT disabled
• Local storage: 2x Crucial MX300 SSDs in hardware RAID 1
• Network cards: Dual port HPE 560M, Dual port HPE 560FLB (both Intel 82599)

Software

• XCP-ng Centre 8.0 (stable) was used throughout testing.
• Client VM is CentOS 7.6

Test 1: ISO upgrade from fresh XCP-ng 7.6 install

1. Fresh Install XCP-ng 7.6.
2. Configure only the management interface, just left it as DHCP.
3. Install XCP-ng 7.6 updates and reboot.
4. Reboot off XCP-ng 8 Beta ISO and select upgrade from 7.6.
5. Upgrade completed, rebooted server.
6. Connected with XCP-ng Centre.
7. Tried to copy VM cross-pool from XCP-ng 7.6 to the new standalone XCP-ng 8 beta host
   • Looked like it was going to work, but wanted to setup network bonding and VLANs first so cancelled.
8. Created a 2x 10Gbit, 20Gbit LACP bond on the non-management NICs. (Failed Test)
   • After 1-3 minutes the bond showed up, but in a disconnected stated..
   • Waited 10 minutes, no change, nothing in xe-task list.
   • Rebooted host.
   • Tried deleting and re-creating the bond.
   • Bond still showing as disconnected: (Failed Test)

   •   # ovs-appctl bond/show bond0
           ---- bond0 ----
       bond_mode: balance-slb
       bond may use recirculation: no, Recirc-ID : -1
       bond-hash-basis: 0
       updelay: 31000 ms
       downdelay: 200 ms
       next rebalance: 6113 ms
       lacp_status: negotiated
       active slave mac: 00:00:00:00:00:00(none)
     
       slave eth0: disabled
         may_enable: false
     
       slave eth1: disabled
         may_enable: false
     

   • 
   • Switches (Juniper EX4550) show:
     • Physical links: up
     • Bond: down (this should be up)
     • Received state: defaulted (this should be current), this means that the switches "did not receive an aggravation control PDU within the LACP timeout * 2".
     • MUC state: detached (should be collecting distributing).
   • Note: This is the same config as our 7.6 pools as it was with XenServer as pools as well.
   • Completely powered off server, then powered on again - this strangely enough Fixed the issue!
   • Leaving for now, continuing other testing.
9. Created a 2x 10Gbit, Active/Passive bond on the management NICs.
   • Bond created and connected within 30 seconds.
10. Tried to copy VM cross-pool from XCP-ng 7.6 to the new standalone XCP-ng 8 beta host (Failed Test)
    • The Next button was greyed out this time, but I couldn't see any issues. (Failed Test)
    • Closed and re-opened XCP-ng Centre, tried again - this time Next was available when trying to copy cross-pool, but I selected cancel to test again.
    • This time - the Next button was greyed out again, but I couldn't see any issues. (Failed Test)
    • 
    • Leaving for now, continuing other testing.
11. Added a SMB based ISO SR.
12. Created a CentOS 7 VM, installed from the latest CentOS 7 ISO on the ISO SR to local storage.
13. VM booted, installed xen tools, rebooted all fine.
14. No networking in the CentOS 7 VM due to the XCP-ng bond0 not functioning, so could not test in-VM functions any further.
15. Suspended VM failed. (Failed Test)
    • 
16. Start VM successfully.
17. Snapshot VM successfully.
18. Delete snapshot successfully.
19. Shutdown VM successfully.

From https://github.com/xcp-ng/xcp/wiki/Test-XCP

Text XCP - Results

• Verify installation.
• Verify connectivity with your interfaces - Pass, but required server to be powered off and on again rather than a reboot to work, will test again.
• Verify connectivity to Shared Storages. - Cannot test, at test location there is no spare SAN LUN I can use at present.
• Verify creation a new Linux VM (install guest tools).
• Verify creation a new Windows VM (install guest tools) - We don't run Windows
• Verify basic VM functionality (start, reboot, suspend, shutdown)
• Verify migration of a VM from an host to another. - Cannot test, at test location there is no second XCP-ng 8.0 host available at present.
• Verify migration of a VM from an old host to (this) release one -
  FAIL
• Verify migration of a VM from a newest host to the old one (this test should be fail).
• Check your logs for uncommon info or warnings. - Yet to test.

Performance Test

• Compare speed of write/read of disks in the old and in the new release - Yet to test.
• Compare speed of interfaces in the old and in the new release - Yet to test.

Just FYI - I have performed CPU and PGBench benchmarks on XCP-ng 8 beta 1, both with Hyperthreading enabled and disabled when running two identical VMs under different types of low, medium and heavy CPU load.

Results are available here: https://github.com/sammcj/benchmark_results/tree/master/xcpng/8/hyperthreading_impact

TLDR;

• Significant performance decrease (38.7725%) when running multithreaded Sysbench CPU benchmarks in parallel on two VMs when hyperthreading is disabled.

• Significant performance decrease (16.96%) when running PGBench under 'normal' load benchmarks in parallel on two VMs when hyperthreading is disabled.

• No significant performance decrease when running Phoronix Test Suite's Pybench and OpenSSL benchmarks in parallel on two VMs when hyperthreading is disabled.