Getting started with automated provisioning?

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@biggen said in Getting started with automated provisioning?:

@Pete-S This is so helpful! Thank you very much.

I’m not sure the difference between a clone and a copy. I’ll look that up.

This seems much easier than having to create a vm from scratch using xo-cli. I guess using the xe commands means I’m running these directly on the host preferable from a Bash script when I get them working how I like?

Hey, you're welcome. Just happy to help out a colleague. Post your progress and we can all share!

You can run the command on the host over ssh or directly on it physically or inside xencenter aka xcp-ng center under the Console tab.

You can also run it on another machine if you have xe installed locally.
Using xe -s <hostname_or_ip> -u <username> -pw <password> whatever_commands_you_want_to_run
I don't know how to install xe on a generic server though. But you can use this command if you have a several independent xcp-ng hosts.

1337

@biggen said in Getting started with automated provisioning?:

I’m not sure the difference between a clone and a copy. I’ll look that up.

It's just how the storage is handled.

Say that you have a debian install that uses 10GB. If you make a clone, the clone will also use the same 10GB of storage and only whatever blocks that it changes are stored separately. So if you make 9 clones maybe the entire 10 VMs will use a total of 11GB or something.

If you make a copy, the storage from the original VM is copied into a new but mostly identical 10GB. And the second another 10GB and so on. With a total of 10 VMs the total storage used are 100GB.

Clones are more frugal on storage but has more overhead so might be a little slower.
Clones use the same storage mechanism as snapshots while copied VMs are just a copy.

Practically speaking it's faster to work with clones but if you're cloning small VMs like minimal installs and have SSD disks the difference in time is small.

scottalanmiller

@biggen said in Getting started with automated provisioning?:

I’m not sure the difference between a clone and a copy. I’ll look that up.

Clones are linked. Copies are discrete.