BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer

travisdh1

More fun? Migrate a VM from two CPUs vendors (Intel/AMD), while running a Java program inside the VM. If you love fireworks, worth the shot.

Fireworks he says, more like fireworks going off on the freeway during rush hour

BRRABill

@travisdh1 said:

Fireworks he says, more like fireworks going off on the freeway during rush hour

With a caravan of gas tankers all around your car.

olivier

That's pretty much a good illustration.

BRRABill

@olivier said:

That's pretty much a good illustration.

So in theory best practice would be having very similar hardware.

olivier

Yes, totally. Sometimes it's not possible, so you got CPU masking as an alternative: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX127059

travisdh1

@BRRABill said:

@olivier said:

That's pretty much a good illustration.

So in theory best practice would be having very similar hardware.

Yes. That's actually the reason all hypervisors only do things like HA on similar hardware. They won't care if it's running on AMD or Intel CPU, but they wouldn't be able to migrate a VM between the two without at least a reboot.

BRRABill

@olivier

Is there a log in XO?

It flashes something up when it does something "like VM copy started", but I don't always see anything else.

Is there a place to checkto see the copy did indeed complete?

olivier

You got tasks visible in the top menu (progress is broken due to a bug in XenServer).

Indeed there is a log in XO, but if you are using the sources, I can't tell where, depends on how you installed it.

BRRABill

@olivier said:

You got tasks visible in the top menu (progress is broken due to a bug in XenServer).

Is there a way to know a task has completed successfully?

Dashrender

@BRRABill said:

@olivier said:

You got tasks visible in the top menu (progress is broken due to a bug in XenServer).

Is there a way to know a task has completed successfully?

For a backup yes - it's in the backup pane.. I didn't see one in the GUI for the export of a live VM though.

olivier

The task list just near the main menu.

BRRABill

@olivier said:

The task list just near the main menu.

When I mouse over that, it is greyed out and says "no running tasks".

olivier

So it means none of your host is currently doing "long" async tasks (like exporting or importing a VM)

BRRABill

@olivier said:

So it means none of your host is currently doing "long" async tasks (like exporting or importing a VM)

I guess what I am looking for is something like XC has with the EVENTS tab...

-> copy from XS1 to XS2 started
-> transferring xyz
-> backup complete

Is there anything like that in XO? Otherwise how would you officially know the job completed with no errors?

(If it's not there, I'm going to add it to you new version wihlist thread! )

olivier

"Tasks" are a XAPI object, telling you something happening on your host.

The progress value is broken in all current versions of XenServer (fixed in Dundee).

Making a VM copy is a complex task:

we start to download chunks on the HTTP export handler of the origin host
at the same time, we start to upload those chunks (on the fly) on the destination host

Each one of them had their respective tasks (export and import) but they don't "know" we are in fact "streaming" stuff between them (for them, it's more like a classical import or export).

Plus, XAPI is a pain to know when the transfer is finished (we had to use some hacks, because they don't use HTTP standard). Furthermore, we don't have the size of what we are exporting, so we can't "guess" the progress by ourselves.

It could fail on any side (fail export, fail import, for many reasons). So we catch anything we could.

But for now, there is no "XO" tasks, just multiple "XenServer tasks".

BRRABill

@olivier

Perhaps I am not asking my question properly.

In XC (which is far less featured than XO in my opinion!), you get the following type of status:

"Succeeded","Copying VM 'XenOrchestra' to 'Copy of XenOrchestra' on SR 'SATA Array'
Copied
Time: 00:00:45","xenserver-1","Mar 29, 2016 3:00 PM"

There is no way to see that in XO? I can use XC for this, but XO is so much nicer to use, being web-based.

Also, XC seems to have a progress bar that worked when I did this copy. Are they working around the bug somehow?

olivier

@BRRABill Can you provide a real world example with a XC screenshot?

BRRABill

olivier

This is the XenServer task list. Is the task stays at "Success" when it's done? (eg with the migration?)

BRRABill

@olivier said:

This is the XenServer task list. Is the task stays at "Success" when it's done? (eg with the migration?)

Yes, it stays at success when it is done, with the amount of time it took.

As it moves along, the progress bar there also moves.