@Dashrender Okay let's retake a clean example: one VM in a SR, with one 4GB VDI:

# lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [4.02 GiB] inherit

After first snapshot:

# lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-38e2156f-da74-4edb-ac83-56fda54cfe55' [1.75 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [4.02 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-f18856a5-039b-4d84-bf6c-a259d0f49a9e' [8.00 MiB] inherit

After second snapshot:

# lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-38e2156f-da74-4edb-ac83-56fda54cfe55' [1.75 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-f18856a5-039b-4d84-bf6c-a259d0f49a9e' [8.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [4.02 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-68408f33-5a69-4b3b-afdd-a2cfabcad9ba' [8.00 MiB] inherit

As you can see, we got a second 8 MiB logical volume, nothing more (base parent and active VDI doesn't change).

Let's remove the latest snapshot:

# lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-38e2156f-da74-4edb-ac83-56fda54cfe55' [1.75 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-f18856a5-039b-4d84-bf6c-a259d0f49a9e' [8.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [4.02 GiB] inherit

It removes the previously created volume, as expected. Now, let's remove the initial snapshot. Durin few seconds, we'll have this:

lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-38e2156f-da74-4edb-ac83-56fda54cfe55' [1.75 GiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [8.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/leaf_770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e_38e2156f-da74-4edb-ac83-56fda54cfe55' [4.00 MiB] inherit

But it will be automatically "garbage collected" when the system will see than the chain doesn't have any snapshot in it (after few seconds in this case):

# lvscan inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/MGT' [4.00 MiB] inherit inactive '/dev/VG_XenStorage-e27c48de-509f-3fec-d627-7f348062ab1a/VHD-770ceeac-e97e-4e05-b9c5-892b97b9d16e' [4.02 GiB] inherit

We are back to the initial situation.

@halizard Awesome, thank you and your group a crap ton for me.

Gives me stuff to work on!

@DustinB3403 said:

Reading the below stats is a bit, awkward to say the least it shows the information, but it's not entirely clear in my opinion. XenCenter seems to graph the disk usage more accurately at the Hypervisor level. (shown below is XO showing the Hypervisor level)

0_1452189348096_2016-01-07_12-55-36.png

When you select a VM though you get something similar to below.

0_1452189500086_2016-01-07_12-58-12.png

Now I personally, don't care so much about an individual VM's disk performance, I care about the host. So for me using XenCenter provides a "better" explanation of what I'm reading.

That's pretty cool. However keep in mind that in some cases, a single VM's disk performance can be hurting performance for the other VMs as well.

LVM clearly dictates.....

@travisdh1 said:

If you've got Xen working, why still have a second boot option instead of running it in a VM?

I mean, I can understand wanting to experiment, but that's just odd.

As mentioned earlier, this is fine with me, started working on the Xen, but just wondering how this worked earlier and why is it not working now. @Mohammed-Fota i will try the bios update as well.

Well... plug-in downloaded source, compiled, installed and activated.
In "Setting/Plugins" I can see now the "backup-reports" and "transport-email" plugins.
I made some simple test with "Backup Jobs" and all seems ok.

Thanks guys.

Yes, RDS is built from XenApp. They are one and the same, XenApp just has more features.

@coliver We can implement a "remote" of Amazon type, that shouldn't be a problem!

I've never overcommitted memory. No idea 🙂

Looks like

xm shutdown -a

will shutdown all of the vms

And you can do it on CentOS with NFS too: http://mangolassi.it/topic/6130/linux-lab-project-building-a-simple-linux-nfs-server

Modding to mark as a question that has been resolved.

Once the Installation GUI comes up, I'm going to customize my installation. Desktops are nice to look at from time to time.

It's completely unneeded, but whatever. I want it.

So customize your installation and select "Server with GUI" else select "File and Print Server" for basic file share functionality in a CLI.

Select Done.

Select your partitioning, the basics are fine. Click into and then click done.

Lastly click "Begin Installation"

Set your Root password and follow the onscreen guides. Create additional users if you need them. (Which you should. No one should use the root account for everything)

@aaronstuder said in Building Out XenServer 6.5 with USB Boot and Software RAID 10:

Confirmed Working 😄

Awesome, thanks.

@johnhooks said:

@Dashrender said:

@johnhooks said:

@JaredBusch said:

@WingCreative said:

First thing is you're going to want to set up an ISO share so you can start launching VMs. I set up a CIFS share so that I can just put ISOs into a folder on my workstation and have XenCenter automatically be able to mount them.

I don't want this on my workstation. Does XenServer not have a method to locally store files someplace?

With Hyper-V I can just drop iso files in a folder on the C/D/E/Whatever drive.
With VMWare I can upload iso files to a folder on the the datastore.

As @DustinB3403 linked you have to add it from cli through the Dom0. Kind of stupid if you ask me.

May be kinda stupid, but considering they have a Dom0, kinda makes sense. It's the same in Hyper-V. ESXi is the odd-man out here, but then, there's no Dom0 there.

I understand since the Dom0 doesn't have much room, but they should give you the option to mount a usb through XenCenter though.

They don't, I believe, because they want the XC interface to be easy for people working with pool, which is the majority of their base. Using a USB drive on a single host makes a lot of sense when you have only one host but when you have a lot of them it would potentially get really confusing.

So many things use snapshots under the hood, space can grow and shrink pretty rapidly in confusing ways.

@Dashrender said:

Is linux better than it was, sure, is it as good for non techies as Windows, possible I suppose as I haven't installed Mint in ... ever.

I've tried testing this before and I've never seen any non-techie feel that Windows was better. Literally, never. I've only seen experienced Windows users that did not want to switch. Starting from scratch, Linux has always been found to be easier in the few "greenfield" tests that I've ever seen.

@scottalanmiller Planning to start it this week.

I'm still finding parts to use. Trying to be as cost conscious as possible as this is only my home lab. (and the significant other gets testy when I want to "buy toys")

As mentioned earlier, I would be interested, but would like to know more about the lab now that you have all in place, on what do we get to play with

@jshiers said:

Maybe I should just start do inplace upgrades on my servers!!!!

That's an option for sure. Snap them, upgrade, test and see.