Today is the day from Hell!

BRRABill

I was a little confused about how exactly to recover from a XS boot failure. Obviously the way you did it was able to get the VMs back up and running. That is good to know.

There is also a methodology to backup the entire XS system, including the VM metadata. This process is described here...
http://techblog.danielpellarini.com/sysadmin/steps-to-take-to-restore-xenserver-from-backup/

In another linked article, he explains what is backup up in the metadata as:
"And by VM metadata I mean what drives are connected to what VM, the name of the drive, the network interfaces etc."

I guess if you had a lot of custom settings for your VMs (tags, etc.) or a lot of stuff listed as metadata, it might be good to do such a backup.

This is something I am still a bit unclear on.

Dashrender

@BRRABill said in Today is the day from Hell!:

I guess if you had a lot of custom settings for your VMs (tags, etc.) or a lot of stuff listed as metadata, it might be good to do such a backup.

This is something I am still a bit unclear on.

Or just have like 20+ VMs (hell I'd want that at more than 5 for sure). You don't want to be guessing what VDI (I just feel icky typing that) - I mean virtual disks - go with what VM. Plus, as you said, what adapters are there, etc.

Alex Sage

@coliver said in Today is the day from Hell!:

Just FYI, this is what I use for patching. I have it setup on a cron schedule.

https://github.com/antonym/xs_patcher

Thanks!

momurda

@Dashrender said in Today is the day from Hell!:

So I popped in a new SD Card and installed XS 6.5 again. Went to do updates and decide to just start at the oldest and move my way upward. Well once I reached Sp1 suddenly there was about 35 more - no thanks, don't want to be here forever, already late enough.

Found this link: http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX138115
Updated June 14, 2016

It shows that you can go Install > Sp1 > update 12 > update 24 > update 27 > update 29 > update 32 > update 33.

Many of the updates are cumulative, do you don't have to install them all from scratch.

Hope this saves someone some time.

This is what i did when upgraded past sp1, just installed about 3 or 4 cumulative updates.
Also, in the future you could save a backup of your XS install with vm/sr info to the local SR, or anywhere else, just in case. It is an option from #xsconsole
I do this before upgrading usually, and keep it there afterwards.
edit: ah wait, i see someone mentioned the xsconsole backups.

Dashrender

This is the second time in two days I've read about XS console - what is the XS console? Do you mean, does Citrix mean, the XS host? Calling it a console is so..... weird.

But hey, they call the virtual disks that are attached to VMs VDIs - so what do I know?

momurda

The root console
0_1467304225843_upload-cd40beef-d1be-40fd-9bcf-65910c321bda
The xsconsole
0_1467304309417_upload-5c653bd6-d231-4d41-8065-344c4f3e2a5d

BRRABill

@Dashrender said

This is the second time in two days I've read about XS console - what is the XS console? Do you mean, does Citrix mean, the XS host? Calling it a console is so..... weird.

But hey, they call the virtual disks that are attached to VMs VDIs - so what do I know?

PIPE DOWN! Do you want your servers hearing you and crashing again?????

BRRABill

@momurda said

The xsconsole

Was redacting that address really necessary?

momurda

probably not

BRRABill

@momurda said

probably not

If someone can find you with that, you've got a real hacker on your hands!

Dashrender

@momurda said in Today is the day from Hell!:

The root console

The xsconsole

Psst - give greenshot a try - it's a free screen capture utility that has cool bluring features for bluring whatever you don't want read.

Alex Sage

@Dashrender Hope your having a better day today

Dashrender

@aaronstuder said in Today is the day from Hell!:

@Dashrender Hope your having a better day today

I'm having an OK one. Now if we could just keep employees from quitting.

MattSpeller

@Dashrender said in Today is the day from Hell!:

@aaronstuder said in Today is the day from Hell!:

@Dashrender Hope your having a better day today

I'm having an OK one. Now if we could just keep employees from quitting.

I like a combination of leg hold traps and empty promises

Alex Sage

@MattSpeller contacts with ridiculous buyouts work well too.

BRRABill

In the vein of EXT vs LVM and LVM "partitions"....

In the directions, it says to find the SCSI ID of the device/partition where the SR data is stored.

Here is my list.


lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jul 28 10:15 ata-HITACHI_HTS725050A9A364_101114PCK404VLKX3J2J -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jul 28 10:15 ata-KINGSTON_KW-S34480-4W1_50026B7256062EA5 -> ../../sdb
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256 -> ../../sdc
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256-part1 -> ../../sdc1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256-part2 -> ../../sdc2
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256-part3 -> ../../sdc3
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256-part5 -> ../../sdc5
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:15 ata-WDC_WD800JD-75MSA3_WD-WMAM9CVU1256-part6 -> ../../sdc6
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 11:14 dm-name-XSLocalEXT--40f7cced--9587--c38f--e152--057e4ec2b2d0-40f7cced--9587--c38f--e152--057e4ec2b2d0 -> ../../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:04 dm-name-XSLocalEXT--dba1e375--4e51--7e22--a64b--e7bcc39db67a-dba1e375--4e51--7e22--a64b--e7bcc39db67a -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 11:14 dm-uuid-LVM-3F38x8Jz47oaL9oGSflGJbtudHmg0iB58aT2PLBzJ1blhfOYFHYsKioY3LpIVhvh -> ../../dm-1
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 10 Jul 28 10:04 dm-uuid-LVM-ssNVRZji8uJzgesTM3EGZ0vTo7k9MEjd3K9U1rXFHGTNWolwQ8eAe363oDjRu34r -> ../../dm-0
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jul 28 10:15 wwn-0x5000cca5b5f70e1c -> ../../sda
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root  9 Jul 28 10:15 wwn-0x50026b7256062ea5 -> ../../sdb

Because XS by default uses the entire SR storage device as LVM, with an EXT parition, is that why you'd select the whole device here? (I selected ata-KINGSTON_KW-S34480-4W1_50026B7256062EA5 (/dev/sdb) from my list.)

travisdh1

@BRRABill It wan'ts the SCSI ID, because that ID shouldn't ever change. That same drive might become sdd if you add/remove drives, but the SCSI ID will remain the same.

BRRABill

@travisdh1 said in Today is the day from Hell!:

@BRRABill It wan'ts the SCSI ID, because that ID shouldn't ever change. That same drive might become sdd if you add/remove drives, but the SCSI ID will remain the same.

What I mean is, it says drive or partition.

So if the entire drive is using a LVM "partition" than it doesn't show as a partition. You would just give it the entire drive SCSI ID.

But, say it was on /sdc5 ... you'd give it the SCSI ID for that partition?

Still just shoring up my EXT/LVM knowledge.

scottalanmiller

@BRRABill said in Today is the day from Hell!:

So if the entire drive is using a LVM "partition" than it doesn't show as a partition. You would just give it the entire drive SCSI ID.

But, say it was on /sdc5 ... you'd give it the SCSI ID for that partition?

This is confusing, so maybe this will help...

/dev/sdc is a drive
/dev/sdc5 is a partition on that drive

If you put LVM on /dev/sdc there is no partitions and LVM uses the entire drive.
If you put LVM on /dev/sdc5 there is a partition and LVM uses the entire partition. That partition MIGHT use the entire drive or not.

BRRABill

@scottalanmiller said in Today is the day from Hell!:

@BRRABill said in Today is the day from Hell!:

So if the entire drive is using a LVM "partition" than it doesn't show as a partition. You would just give it the entire drive SCSI ID.

But, say it was on /sdc5 ... you'd give it the SCSI ID for that partition?

This is confusing, so maybe this will help...

/dev/sdc is a drive
/dev/sdc5 is a partition on that drive

If you put LVM on /dev/sdc there is no partitions and LVM uses the entire drive.
If you put LVM on /dev/sdc5 there is a partition and LVM uses the entire partition. That partition MIGHT use the entire drive or not.

What I think is still getting me is that the SR is really EXT on the LVM controlled drive.

So why wouldn't you give it the SCSI ID of that, instead of the entire drive?

What if there was more than one LV on the LVM controlled drive, and each had EXT?

Or am I still confusing partitions and file systems?