How Complete is XenServer Really
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@coliver said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
Don't get me wrong, I really like XS...
As a HyperV guy, if HyperV was setup like XS (instead of needing all the the domain BS just to connect) it would be much more successful, my 2 centsWait... what? You don't need to be connected to a domain to use Hyper-V? Where did you get that idea from?
Why can't you just install Hyper-V & connect with a browser like ESXi or XO?
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@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@coliver said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
Don't get me wrong, I really like XS...
As a HyperV guy, if HyperV was setup like XS (instead of needing all the the domain BS just to connect) it would be much more successful, my 2 centsWait... what? You don't need to be connected to a domain to use Hyper-V? Where did you get that idea from?
Why can't you just install Hyper-V & connect with a browser like ESXi or XO?
What does this have to do with a domain? Even when connected to a domain you'd need Hyper-V Manager to do any management. This was a design decision, that was the wrong choice in my opinion, but has really nothing to do with functionality.
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@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@coliver said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
Don't get me wrong, I really like XS...
As a HyperV guy, if HyperV was setup like XS (instead of needing all the the domain BS just to connect) it would be much more successful, my 2 centsWait... what? You don't need to be connected to a domain to use Hyper-V? Where did you get that idea from?
Why can't you just install Hyper-V & connect with a browser like ESXi or XO?
Because Hyper-V is lacking and needs commercial third party tools to get to that point. That's a big deficiency in the system.
XS has that too, but XO provides it and for free. So that's why XS+XO as a bundle is what we often refer to.
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XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
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@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
With XO it certainly is a very complete solution.
Without XO, we would be using unitrends (or hyper-v and some backup appliance)
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@coliver said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@FATeknollogee said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@coliver Let me re-phrase that.
You need a domain to take full advantage of the Hyper-V stack (is that better?)Which features? Everything I'm aware of can be done without a domain.
Nothing, but I assume he means without a domain setup, remote connectivity is a pain in the ass to set up.
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@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
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I agree with the OP - Dustin's SR problem wasn't solved by going to a USB stick based install. Did it ultimately make it easier, perhaps a little, but the install was still not easy.
But, at the same time I don't know that ESXi or Hyper-V would be any easier.
Can anyone speak to installing ESXi or Hyper-V to local OBR-10 5 TB or larger and having access to the remaining storage for VMs upon completion of installation?
With any luck, XS v7 has fixed this.But back to the OP's point. XS does seem to expect one to know a lot of linux based commands and lookup many xe commands to do things that are completely possible to be done within the GUI in ESXi and Hyper-V.
For example, importing a SR(datastore). In XS you must use the command line for this. In ESXi, this can be accomplished completely in the vSphere GUI.
And speaking about importing a SR - ESXi will see and import the VMs from the SR automatically, recreating all of the VMs on that SR (it does ask first though). in XS you have to have previously backed up the metadata, then restore it. The restore might be along the same lines ESXi, but the backup process? That doesn't exist in ESXi. -
I can say this, coming from ESXi to XenServer was almost painless, it saved my arse. But please oh please learn about XO because I had to get help from the community because I had a poorly thought up backup plan (aka didn't make it that far) and it came back to bite me in the arse.
I think install XenServer compared to ESXi is about equal except for I can install to ESXi to a USB like it requires nothing
That had to be my biggest draw to ESXi. Outside of that, I mean managing XS is actually kinda straight forward but I think the way the gui works its better than ESX it just takes getting used to.Adding hard drives is my current dilemma
thats where in my test environment I'm getting painnnnnnnnnnnn. But once you put it on a proper raid / server you should be fine. -
Hope you don't mind some questions.
@krisleslie said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
I can say this, coming from ESXi to XenServer was almost painless, it saved my arse. But please oh please learn about XO because I had to get help from the community because I had a poorly thought up backup plan (aka didn't make it that far) and it came back to bite me in the arse.
Did you use XO at all before you realized your backups weren't there?
I think install XenServer compared to ESXi is about equal
Did you use local storage? If so, how large is/was your SR?
except for I can install to ESXi to a USB like it requires nothing
That had to be my biggest draw to ESXi.Actually, install XS to USB is as easy or easier than installing ESXi to USB.
Outside of that, I mean managing XS is actually kinda straight forward but I think the way the gui works its better than ESX it just takes getting used to.
When you say it's easier in XS, is that in XC or XO or both? What makes it easier/better? Did you ever have to remount a datastore in ESXi compared to doing so in XS?
Adding hard drives is my current dilemma
thats where in my test environment I'm getting painnnnnnnnnnnn. But once you put it on a proper raid / server you should be fine.Did you ever add additional storage in your ESXi - if yes, was it easier/harder? What about doing this in XS is hard/painful?
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@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
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No, I was just testing it. I had used it 1 year prior, I used Ghetto method before.
Small storage just under 600 GB / SSD
Yea installing ESXi to usb is so easy I wish they all could be so simple.
It is easier to me but I have used all 3 - Hyper-V, ESXi and XS and between the 3, I favored XS. But if your use to windows tools I find it hard to believe one wouldn't love hyper-v and 9nine tools. I did have to remount the data store and it was painful because I didn't have a proper backup, I still made it work but wow I had some downtime. Had I spent more time getting used to XO I wouldn't have had the issue.
Adding storage to ESXi was pretty straight forward. I used iscsi, local drives, raid 1, raid 10. I went nuts. That was for testing purposes and for learning.
When I do my entire infrastructure over, I'm going full XS+X0 with Windows Server Data Center 2012 to as of now, just 1 host with a minimum of 32 GB of RAM with RAID 10 Storage hopefully using 15K drives. I have to shoot for the moon because i'm part of a non profit. My storage needs are kinda paltry. at the moment 1-2 tb is almost more than enough for all my VMs and really I could get by with 1 TB. My actual file server is where I'm rethinking my strategy as I split my nas using iscci to handle some of FS requirements and instead will stop us using my for split storage (vms/shares) and let it just be for backup.
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@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
KVM. Qemu and libvirt do pretty much everything. Qemu even does dirty bitmap for incremental backups.
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@stacksofplates said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
KVM. Qemu and libvirt do pretty much everything. Qemu even does dirty bitmap for incremental backups.
Libvert is an API, though. That's like XS with XAPI. What does the GUI for a cluster look like with KVM and libvert?
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Im no Tobias Kreidl, but my experience with XS is great so far. I only have XO free right now so i cant speak to that, although it looks great and even the free version helped me solve some problem i had after live storage move failed.
I had a problem when i started here that had existed for years with storage timeouts; i fixed that and it really just goes now. It has live migration and live storage migration built in. Upgrades every 3 weeks or so. Lots of new stuff has been added since 6.2>7
Live storage migration dose mess up quite a bit though; it is best to shutdown a vm and then move the storage that way.Long as youre not trying to do the usb boot thing and use lvm there should be 0 problems in my experience.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@stacksofplates said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
KVM. Qemu and libvirt do pretty much everything. Qemu even does dirty bitmap for incremental backups.
Libvert is an API, though. That's like XS with XAPI. What does the GUI for a cluster look like with KVM and libvert?
That's all done in Virt-Manager. The different nodes have the list of VMs on each.
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@scottalanmiller said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@stacksofplates said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
KVM. Qemu and libvirt do pretty much everything. Qemu even does dirty bitmap for incremental backups.
Libvert is an API, though. That's like XS with XAPI. What does the GUI for a cluster look like with KVM and libvert?
That's still all bundled together like with KVM. You don't have XS without XAPI, so it's the same thing.
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@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
You've still lost me. Hyper-V has everything that XS has. XO isn't part of XS, so sure while it is available for free, it still doesn't count as part of XS.
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@krisleslie said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
But if your use to windows tools I find it hard to believe one wouldn't love hyper-v and 9nine tools.
LOL this is what I hated about Hyper-V. The requirement to manage it like managing normal Windows servers, a dozen different tools, or a third party one. ESXi on the other hand was awesome, ONE app (vSphere) that had every single aspect to ESXi all in one place to mange it all. Just Fantastic.
I did have to remount the data store and it was painful because I didn't have a proper backup, I still made it work but wow I had some downtime. Had I spent more time getting used to XO I wouldn't have had the issue.
So were you really remounting a non damaged SR, or did you have to wipe a corrupt SR, then remount it and then restore you VMs to it?
When I do my entire infrastructure over, I'm going full XS+X0 with Windows Server Data Center 2012 to as of now, just 1 host with a minimum of 32 GB of RAM with RAID 10 Storage hopefully using 15K drives. I have to shoot for the moon because i'm part of a non profit. My storage needs are kinda paltry. at the moment 1-2 tb is almost more than enough for all my VMs and really I could get by with 1 TB. My actual file server is where I'm rethinking my strategy as I split my nas using iscci to handle some of FS requirements and instead will stop us using my for split storage (vms/shares) and let it just be for backup.
I'd skip those expensive 15K drives and just go all SSD. You can drop RAID 10 and go RAID 5 at that size with SSD.
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@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Dashrender said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
@Reid-Cooper said in How Complete is XenServer Really:
XS may not be complete, but isn't it the "most complete" of all options available?
what does that mean? most complete?
More complete than other options. What else comes with as many pieces as XS does, at least when XO is included?
You've still lost me. Hyper-V has everything that XS has. XO isn't part of XS, so sure while it is available for free, it still doesn't count as part of XS.
Okay, then bundle it yourself and solve the problem
Open source is not like proprietary software. You can bundle it yourself. So we stated this above... XS refers to XS+XO as a bundle. So now it all comes together, problem solved.
