BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer
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@BRRABill said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
And to be clear, there is no reinstall of XS on an existing drive, right?
It trashes whatever you install it on?
Right. Thankfully, it is really easy to make an exact copy of the XenServer drive. Hrm, I actually need to do that tody. I'll try to take screenshots and do a how-to type writup.
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@DustinB3403 said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
See here
http://mangolassi.it/topic/8537/how-to-clone-a-xen-usb-on-windows
Well, that's one less thing for me to document here
Then again, I'm going to be doing this on a live, running XenServer (LVM is great, you should sing it's praises.) -
For me, it's just another way of doing things the way I am used to doing them, instead of using the easy way already built in.
I can take my server down for a bit if I need to, so just shut down the VM, copy it to my test XS setup, redo my array, install XS to USB, and copy the VM back. Easy, and all built-in.
Why try to do something any harder?
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@BRRABill said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
For me, it's just another way of doing things the way I am used to doing them, instead of using the easy way already built in.
I can take my server down for a bit if I need to, so just shut down the VM, copy it to my test XS setup, redo my array, install XS to USB, and copy the VM back. Easy, and all built-in.
Why try to do something any harder?
Because it isn't harder, it's easier. none of the steps that you mention are easy in a failure condition.
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@scottalanmiller said
Because it isn't harder, it's easier. none of the steps that you mention are easy in a failure condition.
I meant moving my install from the array to USB. But you are right in your comment as well.
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When you copy/export a VM, does it also copy removable storage you have attached?
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@BRRABill said
When you copy/export a VM, does it also copy removable storage you have attached?
Well, I figured this one out for myself. Yes, yes it does.
I have my Tandberg drive hooked up to this one VM I am trying to copy. I kept wondering why it needed so much space to copy. Then I removed the Tandberg from the list of VDs, and voila, the space needed was way down.
So that's kind of wierd. Does it convert the removable into permanent in the copy?
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@BRRABill I doubt that it converts it from removable to "internal" but it would have to create the backup with everything as attached.
Otherwise what good is it?
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@DustinB3403 said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
@BRRABill I doubt that it converts it from removable to "internal" but it would have to create the backup with everything as attached.
Otherwise what good is it?
But it is an attached USB drive. How could the copy access that?
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That I'm not certain of, likely what is happening is the USB and connections are being recorded for recovery purposes.
How it gets "restored" and saved I have no idea.
How are you passing USB to your guests?
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@DustinB3403 said
How are you passing USB to your guests?
I go to attach, and the removable USB drive is there.
I wonder if it was a straight USB drive if it would show up. (The Tandberg actually uses removable disks, so I'm not sure if it considers that differently.)
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@DustinB3403 said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
That I'm not certain of, likely what is happening is the USB and connections are being recorded for recovery purposes.
How it gets "restored" and saved I have no idea.
Might be a good question for @olivier to answer, if he knows. (Which he probably does!)
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Today, I redid my test server to boot from USB.
Everything went well.
Except now everything is SO SLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW.
Booting takes so much longer. It's been installing SP1 for what seems like forever at this point.
I guess I got spoiled by the SSD.
The good new is: how often will I ever have to reboot, or install updates, right, RIGHT?
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I don't have any major slowness booting my system. It might be your hardware, that is causing the issue. Startup checks etc.
Rebooting still has to occur regularly.
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@DustinB3403 said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
I don't have any major slowness booting my system. It might be your hardware, that is causing the issue. Startup checks etc.
It's the same hardware as before.
I really think it's just the incredible slowness of USB vs. SSD.
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@BRRABill said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
@DustinB3403 said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:
I don't have any major slowness booting my system. It might be your hardware, that is causing the issue. Startup checks etc.
It's the same hardware as before.
I really think it's just the incredible slowness of USB vs. SSD.
It could also be USB2 vs USB3. USB3 is almost as fast as a hard drive on my home computer. USB2 crawls big time.
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@dafyre said
It could also be USB2 vs USB3. USB3 is almost as fast as a hard drive on my home computer. USB2 crawls big time.
Yeah USB2 sucks, and it's the only option on this brand new server.
I actually discussed that with @scottalanmiller offline, and his take was ... you should never be using USB on a server anyway. (I had questioned why in the world they wouldn't have used USB3.)
I promised him I'd never send him a picture of my server room.
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I do have a USB 3.0 drive attached for a quick fix. Trying to get that moved to a 2 drive Buffalo NAS device.
