So Xen Server gave me an error / what do i do
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@krisleslie said in So Xen Server gave me an error / what do i do:
Why wouldn’t it be supported?
because unlike VMWare, Xen Server doesn't detect that it's on a flash drive and writes all it's logs to the flash drive and kills it in shortish order..... or at min fills the disk and it dies.
Of course YOU can mod that, but most people don't know it's a problem until it IS a problem.
ask me how I know? -
Disk is f*cked up.
Boot to live distro and run tests on the drive to make sure.
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@krisleslie said in So Xen Server gave me an error / what do i do:
So in my installation, I have Xen Server installed to a flash drive then i have my raid storage added as a SR.
I’m hoping the issue is just with the flash drive.
What's a flash drive? An USB flash drive? In that case big no-no. It doesn't have much of a write endurance.
If you want a small drive on a server that doesn't take up a drive bay use an SATA DOM.
Below is the write endurance on Supermicro's SATA DOMs. 1DWPD is about the same as read intensive enterprise SSDs.
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@Pete-S dude you just dropped knowledge
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It has taken about 4 years “if” this flash drive went out. I hope it went it out because that’s better than a raid array going out.
Now I will say this i found out a routine I haven’t done is backup that meta data but maybe once or twice. So that’s something I just read about and will add to the routine.
So if I’m not mistaken, that’s opening up the xsconsole itself and using the back up option? Correct me if I’m wrong.
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Just FYI, I normally buy 128 Gb flash drives that go internally to the server. They don’t die fast. I don’t mean a ssd or HD drive connected via usb into the server. That would be doable but weird.
That’s the whole purpose of having internal connections like that, to load onto flash memory.
In my case because my”help” 🤨 got this server and only got if I’m not mistaken 1 USB port inside. In hindsight I would prefer dual ports inside preferably in raid.
The counter to that is to use a clone tool and clone the flash drive or have raid Cf cards. Very little point to have a real hard drive in but I can see how In a big environment that might be more of the thing.
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@Pete-S gotcha I’m rusty on live distro but can make it happen. I’m thinking the clear path is to reinstall xenserver again, and import the backup data, which as far as I can tell should restore the actual vms also. Am I on the right path of understanding?
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@Dashrender it doesn’t have to detect if it’s on the flash drive or not but I can honestly say I never had an issue ever with VMware. So that same mentality came over to xenserver. Moving the logs over isn’t hard so I can do that and further reduce writes. Great idea brother.
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I should have left the server running because it was loaded into memory and all the vms were fine. When I rebooted the host of course I made this more fun.
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Your vms are on the hardware raid.
Just install a clean xs to your USB/sd and introduce the xe Sr to the host.
DON'T CREATE A SR DURING INSTALLATION.
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@DustinB3403 let me read that
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@Dashrender honestly I wish VMWare would open source some of their code because there are plenty of times where they have definitely made an awesome tool or resource or process but then it’s closed to them and people have to make alternative attempts to emulate what they do in your preferred platform.
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@krisleslie said in So Xen Server gave me an error / what do i do:
@Dashrender honestly I wish VMWare would open source some of their code because there are plenty of times where they have definitely made an awesome tool or resource or process but then it’s closed to them and people have to make alternative attempts to emulate what they do in your preferred platform.
I really think you should try KVM. I think you'd find that it is SO easy. These days with Fedora 30 and virt-manager, for a small environment, it's very hard to beat. Xen is great, but this is harder than necessary.
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@scottalanmiller it's harder because this environment was setup incorrectly.
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Maybe I'm not thinking this through, but it there any circumstance where you'd use a flash drive as a disk on a hypervisor? If you want to spin up new VMs in different places then just use vagrant and/or bash scripting to build and destroy on the fly. I have vagrant VMs fully scripted on KVM and they take less then 2 minutes to fully boot up and script. I can also destroy whenever I want.
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@IRJ could you yes, but I wouldn’t do it like that. It might not make it for a year. But new flash drives improve yearly. There are some now that offer ssd like speed.
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@DustinB3403 well buddy what’s a suggested setup?
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@IRJ i would like to know more about your spin up process
