@dafyre said

The array controller dies... too many disks die...

Right but if that happens (or you lose more than 1 disk which has happened to me) your data is all gone anyway, right? ANd you are restoring the VMs from backup anyway.

And to be clear, there is no reinstall of XS on an existing drive, right?

It trashes whatever you install it on?

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?

@Dashrender said

wow, that made my head spin.

Me, too.

I'm waiting for sommeone to dumb that down for a rook for when I need it, shortly.

@scottalanmiller said

Cool. So the numbers hold up, but no explanation as to why. Something is certainly amiss.

Don't you believe in magic?

Since I have to re-set up my array anyway, I figured I would post this poll and see what ML would do.

WWMLD?

I originally wanted to set up three SSDs in a RAID5 setup. That was going to be the most cost effective way to go and give me the storage I needed. It ended up that I got three drives that were double the original capacity I wanted. Since two of these double capacity drives could meet my storage requirement, I decided to put two of them into a RAID1 and put the third one on the shelf in case one of the array members died.

Well, I've been thinking about it, and talking with a few people offline. I'm thinking maybe it would be best to go back to the original idea of just putting all 3 of them into an array. I'd have way more storage than I need, but could also run VM backups to the array. (Obviously only for issues with the VM itself, not for disaster recovery if the array/server dies.)

So if you were in this situation ... what would you do?

1. Just use 2 in a RAID1 and store the third drive as a replacement
2. Use all 3 in a a RAID5 array

@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.

@BBigford said

CP offers instant recovery points. It's other companies like BackBlaze & iDrive that take most of the work day to become available. It's because of CP's nearly instant access that make me feel like my expectation of quick access is not completely far-fetched. There were just a couple UI bugs that users would call constantly about, that we couldn't look past.

Like the one above?

One question I had is: how often would they be restoring that many files all over the place?

Usually it is just a file or two, or a folder.

@Dashrender said in Dell PERC Question (Server Down):

it may be allowable, but seems like an unwise thing to do. For example, I would never do that on a RAID 5 array, all that math, one little bit gets messed up.. array is lost. kinda like what happened to you.

Just on a few drives. For other drives, it worked fine.

If you had to wait the whole time for it to rebuild, it would take forever. (Think of the really long RAID5 times @scottalanmiller has mentioned.)

@Dashrender said

But if you want a Xen solution today that supports VMs with image files larger than 2 TB, you can't use XS, and therefore can't use XO either.. so what is your option then?

Have less data.

(JOKE.)

@JaredBusch said

So your problem is you want to remove what you feel is a bad patch? That was not clear.

Yeah, I mean I guess if that was an option, I would do it. But it's not, so I'll deal with the little yellow arrow.

It's not a bad patch. It's a depreciated patch that happened to get installed.

In the future I am just going to use XO to install patches. Part of the learning process.

@JaredBusch

I was going back to the Citrix forums to find the thread I originally saw about not being able to uninstall, and rather having to reinstall XS. To quote to you.

Well, I had seen a possible solution on that thread. (It involved finding the patch on the XS install and deleting it. This leaves it installed but tricks the server into thinking it isn't) Anyway, I decided to try it, and by damn it fixed the issue.

So ... thanks! LOL.

This was the key, if anyone else is reading this in the future and comes across this post.
"From the server that has the patch applied can you see it with xe patch-list ? I'm wondering if you can get the uuid of the patch and go into \var\patch\applied and delete that uuid manually for XS65E016. After that I would restart the toolstack and see if it still shows up as applied. Never tried doing this to make XenServer forget a patch, but there has to be a way."

@DustinB3403 said

I'm glad that it worked for you, but I would refrain from doing it. Use XO to apply the patches (I know you said you would). It's elegant enough to not break things.

I did use XO for the new server, but that doesn't do anything to the fact that the one server in question already HAD the superceded patch on it. If I had done the patches in order from 1 and moving upward, it would not have been an issue. But that isn't what is recommended, nor is it the way XO does it.

I really do wonder if it is some sort of bug with this particular patch. Almost every thread I read about this issue anywhere was regarding this one patch, which is XS65E016.

The Citrix forums also discuss how kludgy the 6.5 hotfix process is, and that is is supposed to be much better in the newer version. (As is the export speed issue.)

@scottalanmiller said

And more importantly, the support needs to only exist for RHEL, not XenServer.

That was your point, yes.

@coliver said

Why would this be a big deal? You've already got a few free management platforms for XS. From my understanding, I've never used it, OSMA is designed to manage the underlying hardware.

Hardware management while the server is running, made easy.

We discussed this a lot in my failing array thread.

iDrac leaves a lot to be desired, though @scottalanmiller found a waya round that with ... text commands!

@olivier said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:

We are already using XAPI VDI export for our backup

That's because y'all is brilliant.

BTW: awesome job on the updates section as well. I used that for the first time recently, and it does a great job.

The one "issue" I ran into on a fresh install of 6.5 was that it got to SP1, and then wouldn't do anything. Knowing SP1 needed a reboot, I rebooted, and then it carried on as expected. But might be nice to say "hey reboot me" or something.

@olivier said in BRRABill's Field Report With XenServer:

In theory, you could have really installed everything in one click if... if XenServer didn't answered an invalid JSON call after SP1 is installed. Thus, you would need to click again on "update all" button. Nothing we could do before Dundee which have a working JSON stuff.

Ah, OK.

Can you perhaps invent a little paper clip that comes up on the bottom of the XO windows that tells you to click that button again?

I AM KIDDING, OF COURSE.

@BRRABill said

This is the article I am referencing:
http://xenserver.org/discuss-virtualization/virtualization-blog/entry/log-rotation-and-syslog-forwarding.html

I ended up trying the "dirty, dirty" trick in the comments tonight. Worked like a charm, and thankfully didn't blow anything up.

@aaronstuder said in SSL Certificates:

https://www.ssls.com/

Thanks for this.

My $70 a year GoDaddy cert was up. I bought the same type of cert from SSLS.COM for $15 for 3 years. TOTAL.

That is exactly the kind of information I was looking for.

More money saved on ML. AWESOME.

And in the process learned a lot of certificates and domain validation.

I still can't get over it was only $5 a year. LOL.