Full Playlist lawrence.video/xcp-ng How to Easily Build The Full Version of Xen Orchestra From Source with XenOrchestraInstallerUpdater kzread.info/dash/bejne/mKmHmdaMf9vJg9I.html XCP NG Storage & Migrations Explained kzread.info/dash/bejne/qoijk6hsfLjOkqg.html Understanding How The XCP-NG & Xen Orchestra Open Source Virtualization Platform Works kzread.info/dash/bejne/dXmJqKqulK-1Yco.htmlsi=uajXwXmFbE5ZEeiD XCP-NG 8.3 beta 2 Download xcp-ng.org/blog/2024/02/15/xcp-ng-8-3-beta-2/ One Line Deploy xen-orchestra.com/blog/one-line-to-deploy-xoa/ Updated UI Design xen-orchestra.com/blog/unleashing-the-power-of-a-unique-atomic-design-system/

Great for the "Life after VMware" series.

Great job guys, I wiped Hyper-V off a Dell 730 and already have 4 VMs up and running. Will start to test DR, backups, restore, etc… performance is fantastic, so great to access my host via browser. Feels like 2024! One comment, make sure you guys register and update the Xen Orchestra to the latest or you will get stuck at the ISO directory step :D

Great tutorial! Thank you. I wish it was available when I switched from ESXi to XCP-NG one year ago 😊

i know this took a ton of time, but it was extremely useful. Thank you very much for the excellent content.

this epic for folks getting into IT/MSP world, thank you!!

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS Thanks for doing this video. I had paid for my own VMware certifications and wrote several books on VMware for the first time admin. Think VMware will fall back and step in it but only time will tell. I will be moving my entire lab over to XCP-NG in the coming months. This video will be a good resource in that process.

Hey Tom, great video! I just recently been getting into XCP-ng and been loving it and have found your previous videos really helpful. This would have been great back then! It would be great to have a video that goes over templates at some point. Along with cloudinit images to "bootstrap" yourself with some simple debian vm's for example.

Thanks for the very good tutorials (and all other videos you do). Really helpful :)

In a word: "wow!" It goes without saying I'm a fan of Tom's channels. This video is beyond incredible. Every aspect that most IT admins want to see for a new product are in this video. I've been on the fence for weeks and months on what our company's "go forward strategy" is going to be (given the changes in the hypervisor marketplace). This video has made it very clear to me. I'm approving a new server order tomorrow - just because of this video (we have to start somewhere). Thanks for this video Tom!

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Thank you!

@jirehla-ab1671

3 ай бұрын

​​@@LAWRENCESYSTEMSeven if xcp-ng has limited features compared to xen entprise liscense editions, can the FOSS aspect of it overcome those limited features?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

@@jirehla-ab1671 I don't understand the question, I made the video with XCP-ng which is fully open source as is Xen Orchestra

@jirehla-ab1671

3 ай бұрын

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS but xen also have q version for commercial enterprise s

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

@@jirehla-ab1671 Yes there are other products based on Xenserver that I did not talk about in this video.

Thanks you tom for this, as a enterprise VMware guy its great to see this solution and how its matured.

Really good and informative video, Tom. It's good XCP-ng get lot of attention these days. 🙂

Thank you so much for putting this together.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Glad you enjoyed it!

Why did I choose Hyperv.. this is so much simpler for my setup. Thanks for sharing

@pepeshopping

3 ай бұрын

HyperV does work, but tte guest support and tools not great, plus, MS Server code is solid, but does require more reboots (ms updates) and a little easier to “break”, infiltrate or infect, but getting harder to break and with AS good uptime as Linux!

@Traumatree

3 ай бұрын

@@pepeshoppingoh it works, but performance wise, it is very bad.

@BPL-Whipster

2 ай бұрын

Hyper-v has a lot of gotchas. I've been running it at scale for nearly 10 years, and honestly I always recommended VMware until recently. Sure it ticks all those boxes, but Christ it's such a basket case. Especially when you stand it up next to proxmox and xcp-ng.

@BPL-Whipster

2 ай бұрын

​@@Traumatreeyou can make the performance decent, but it's a lot of hard work compared to VMware. A lot of it is down to how it handles disk IO in clusters. If you don't set the iscsi and cluster NICs up correctly it just sucks. Some things you might think would make sense, like static link aggregation, don't make sense in hyper-v either. So yeah. Basket case.

@Traumatree

2 ай бұрын

@@BPL-Whipster Hyper-v can't give the performance of vmware or other Linux-based/*BSD based operating system due to the Windows scheduler, memory management and the really bad network stack. All these combined will reduce your performance on the same hardware by almost 20-30% which is huge.

Thanks a lot! Great Tutorial

iSCSI not being compatible with thin provisioning is a real bummer. Thanks for taking all the time and effort to create this video! I have used XO quite a bit and I even learned some things. One thing I'm struggling with is how to do direct connect between NFS storage and all the hosts - so if you could cover direct connections and storage network setups with XCP-NG and XO that would be extremely helpful to me. I'm so used to vmware networking that I think I might be over complicating things.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

I have a video on storage and just use NFS instead of iSCSI. Storage attaches much the same in XCP-ng as it does in VMWare kzread.info/dash/bejne/qoijk6hsfLjOkqg.htmlsi=kmgckS881p4PCHK-

You should mention that many Linux distros have the xe-guest-utilities available through their own repos which saves a lot of typing to mount the CD and run the commands.

I am testing this out. I have a need for an external console for my clients. Similar to VMRC that would allow usb to pass from desktop into the virtual.

Truly grateful 🎉

thank you for an epic tutorial

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

You're very welcome!

@dianoitikas

2 ай бұрын

yes, epic

this is great video. I like snapshots with memory. Hyper-v does same thing, also hyper-v does this when you reboot host basically it takes snapshot with memory of all running vms and then restore them when host starts. this was my gripe with proxmox if you restart the host it does not remember vms that were running and does not restore to the state they were. I wonder does xcp-ng has same functionality because i saw that you had to stop vms to reboot host.

Great video Tom! For shared network storage, do you have guidelines on the network infrastructure for storing VM disks on a NAS? I've heard some say don't bother if you only have gigabit, maybe not even 2.5g, others say if the VMs are low utilization then gigabit is fine, I never know who to believe.

@Uk_Grid_Engineering

3 ай бұрын

I have always run it like this, more to try but in theory if if gigabit and do 125meg then that's not too far off the theoretical speed of a spinning HDD anyway, the bottleneck comes when we are talking about multiple vms over the same single gig link as these will have to share the same 125meg pipe

Very nice walk-through. Unfortunately, every time I try XCP with my USB-C Hub for Ethernet it does not work. I have no network connection and can't even get past the main settings screen after an install. It says Eth0 (not connected). I've tried with DHCP and Static networks, which both work with Proxmox. Any advice would be appreciated. To note, this is the same whether on the latest stable version or the 8.3 beta 2 version. I can't get anything going to even try the product in the browser.

Hi! question, in the 9:50 graph, if there is a VPN, XO Proxy would not be necessary right? as XO proxy would already open the port for the remote connection, it would be either one or the other?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

XO Proxy is more for managing backups, you should still use a VPN.

These are great videos. I love the detail. I have one issue however, when I try to connect my XCPng host, it shows status enabled, but a red triangle beside it, when clicked, says "CERT_HAS_EXPIRED". I am using a legitimately signed cert, and using openssl to verify it shows it not being expired. Any ideas on how to remedy this?

Love that ad

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Thanks

What's the purpose? Can you do productive work on excel in a vm? Is it acceptable to use VM as you primary machine for Microsoft? Would it be slow?

Hi all, great video I just learn a lot, I'm just starting with xcp-ng, what I need to do to have backup option enabled? do I need to pay a subscription fee?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

If you are home user you can build from source and have the full version here kzread.info/dash/bejne/mKmHmdaMf9vJg9I.htmlsi=Jw0Y3XPXko2VnenS

Will xostor be available for xen orchestra community version?

I really like these videos and am amazed by XCP-ng. Hopefully it will be way more successful soon. Since XCP-ng is in many ways compatible to XenServer (former Citrix Hypervisor and so forth), has anyone tried (successfully) using this together with Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops? While in the VDI world I don't see an alternative to Citrix right now, XCP-ng might be one for XenServer. Since Citrix excluded the Hypervisor License from their VDI licensing right after the VMware stuff (surprise), buying XCP-ng licenses for better support might be a valid solution. But only if it works together with the rest. Otherwise, XOA looks great, too.

Wow, nice run down. Can you do a deeper dive on the current storage? Anyone know why you can’t thin provision on iSCSI? It’s block storage, seems you should be able to do anything you want.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

kzread.info/dash/bejne/qoijk6hsfLjOkqg.html

Is it possible to install a Let's Encrypt certificate to a XCP-NG Host? I get an error saying "The provided key is not in a pem-encoded PKCS#8 format." but I am pretty sure my key is in the correct format.

What mini-PC are you using in this video? Looking for one that has support for 2 x NVMe

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

I used this one kzread.info/dash/bejne/l5OGktCDj5XcoM4.html but it does not have a lot of cores

7:52 as you are talking about XCP-Center being EOL you’re showing a notice saying it’s no longer EOL. Someone has taken it over and is going to continue management of it.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Hahaha, I missed that they updated the site from when it was first announced as EOL, I still don't recommend using it. I just applied a trim to the video so that part will be removed once KZread finishes processing it.

@yakk0dotorg

3 ай бұрын

Coming from a Citrix background I leaned heavily on it over the years but I rarely have to go back after the recent XO releases.

@rodneykahane4994

3 ай бұрын

I was testing xcp-ng and xcp-center was the only way I could get an SMB share added

Hi lawrence! Is this the free version of XO used in this set up?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

Ай бұрын

Yes, I do all my videos with the fully open source version unless otherwise noted to show users that they can do everything I show in the video.

Will there come some updates for bigger disk support ? At the moment is max vhd size 2TB

@magicker8052

2 ай бұрын

It's a bit of a pain. Lawrence will tell you to separate data from application but we use massive vms for back just fine. However having to use lvm to merge disks is a pain

I'm currently testing XCP-ng and the only thing I haven't figured out is the patches under pools. All of the videos I've seen show the updates being there but mine says that "Upgrade needed. This feature is available starting from Starter Edition." Do the patches require a subscription?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

They're not available in the starter, if this is for your home lab use the compiled by source version.

Tom, how do you get around 2TB volume limitations? Thanks.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

You can use RAW disk type but it's not something I run into because stuffing that much data into.a virtual disk is bad storage design. kzread.info/dash/bejne/Y6lnw8ueZNqZYso.html

After ejecting the drive my vm can't load. Also when I do apt on linux I get a "Input/output error".

Do the snapshots cause the vm's performance to degrade over time ? I heard checkpoints in hyperv cause the VM to eat up resources over time. I'm unsure about esxi and proxmox. If the snapshots on xcp-ng are just that a true snapshot with no performance hit them I'm sold. This was a great demo

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

On all hypervisor platforms snapshots cause some level of performance degradation due to the nature of how snapshots work.

@al73r

3 ай бұрын

​@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS with xcp-ng it might just be worth forking the VM "clone" vs the snapshot imo. Space these days is not as much of an issue. I wonder how others are handling this performance hit over time

But can it run Windows guest machines? Too many of these hypervisors I've seen can't which is an immediate showstopper for me.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Yes, I have many Windows VM's that run just fine.

How would you compare xcp-ng to nutanix acropolis?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

Fifteen years after being founded and eight years after its IPO, Nutanix just made their first profit. They are a closed source public traded company that could easily be bought by Broadcom and go the same route as VMware.

The XO Lite wasn't a thing when I installed this yesterday.

Why the default size of /media/iso SR is 17.5 GB and how could be increased?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

That is just the space available on that partition, you could point it to a larger one

@live.sports717

3 ай бұрын

Thanks, but how I cloud view all partitions?In my xcp-ng it only shows local Storage and SMB, does not show the partitions with Local Storage. @@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

Hi Lawrence, how do I create a vSwitch?

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

23 күн бұрын

xcp-ng.org/docs/networking.html#concepts

@donovannyoni

16 күн бұрын

Hi Lawrence I'm having some trouble configuring a network security sensor to mirror traffic on the physical port in xcp-ng. I've set it to promiscuous mode, but I'm not seeing any traffic or broadcasts coming out of the SPAN port. Can you help me with the steps to properly configure a SPAN port to mirror the traffic on the physical port in xcp-ng?

There is an annoying low rumbling sound in the background whenever you speak. Are you using some noise removal thing? It doesn't sound like it's working quite correctly. I had to turn on voice removal on my end via NVIDIA Broadcast to get rid of that sound, because it really sound terrible to me and makes me feel physically uncomfortable.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

My audio setup has been the same for almost 2 years and you're the first person to mention a problem.

How ist the Name of the Network Software at 0:30? Its looks great!

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

That is the UniFi interface

@andi2110

3 ай бұрын

Oh, OK thanks. I don't have any unifi device 😅😅

The cable managment in the ad is actually worse than mine 🤣

How is it different to proxmox

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

forums.lawrencesystems.com/t/xen-vs-xenserver-vs-kvm-vs-proxmox/14256

@userou-ig1ze

2 ай бұрын

@@LAWRENCESYSTEMS thanks, but so lengthy

I am trying to run a hypervisor with proper support for Terraform, but also need to import qcow2 and build vms, on 8.3 Beta it has been hell. I may be an idiot, but Proxmox console is so much easier to use, problem with PROXMOS is terraform/tofu support SUCKS. I built Cloud init, imported KVM images in a snap. XCP-NG have not been able to do anything yet. Maybe only works with CLI and XO is just bad, and clunky. Going to try 8.2, if it's the same and I keep getting bogus permission errors when trying to build an image I'm done. Time to make my own terraform provider for proxmox and go back to proxmox.

I love XCP-np 😁 nothing cleaner than XCP. I can see XCP-ng being far more popular now since VMware is being killed off.

Nice tutorial, except that I could not upload a file in the storage

i like xcp-ng, but whenever i try using it i always get thrown some errors i never see these youtube people have to tackle

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

2 ай бұрын

If you have errors post in their forums.

Deploying xen Orchestra on the host if you want to deploy from sources is really kind of an Achilles heel in this setup. You mentioned an xo installation not on the host however this isn't always available. The command line xcp-ng offers is great however it might not be what you want to do. I know xen center is kind of dismissed in this discussion however it seems like a perfect tool to use to connect to xcp-ng host..install a virtual machine and then install xo from sources within vm. I think maybe your video could have gone more into depth how to solve this conundrum although I will admit it touched upon it but glossed over finer details

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Later this year xolite will be available

If they had ZFS, this would be the ultimate hypervisor. KVM+ZFS will be at this GUI level within 2 years (already there if you pay or script it), so let’s see which Hypervisors are still there in 5-8 years.

@1FireyPhoenix

3 ай бұрын

ZFS is in a prototype stage, but very much accessible though XO. You have to map more memory to Dom0 tho.

@pepeshopping

3 ай бұрын

@@1FireyPhoenixprototype is not production or enterprise ready. I imagined that they would be forced to implement ZFS and also get rid of their ancient 2TB max, but again, until they get a one click config backup/restore (and other basic features, like UPS shutdown), and 1 file download for the FULL XO features (compiling is easy, but most techies don't want or cannot do it), I and others that understand real full solutions, will not take it seriously.

Proxmox is good enough for home lab !!!

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

Ok, but this is an XCP-ng video? Is commenting on XCP-ng videos part of their licence agreement? 🤔😜

I always found XCP-NG's system to be clunky and unfriendly... Until I tried to create a similar setup using the alternatives! It's a true shame their GPU passthrough support is so terrible, it's soooo close to being a default "everywhere" hypervisor.

@shammyh

3 ай бұрын

Nah. KVM is literally the default everywhere hypervisor.

@deano1699

3 ай бұрын

@@shammyh well, yeah, that's my point. XCP-NG is intentionally focusing away from single server/homelab, in favor of HA/distributed VMs. But, if they "filled in the last few bits", as it were, they'd have a much nicer to work with solution than bare KVM, Proxmox, Unraid, etc. It's not hard to understand why they don't, but the whole market is ripe for a "less grognardy" solution to Hypervisors everywhere... Someone's eventually going to make the business model work, and suddenly a lot of Windows malware-induced reinstalls will cry out and then go silent forever. In the meantime, I'm totally happy with running virt-manager over QEMU-KVM... But it *is* clunkier, and effectively an "add-on" to a more general-purpose Linux OS. It's also totally possible that Gnome Boxes firms up a bit more, and becomes the magic solution for most folks.

I was trying to use it, cuz it looks nicer then prox. But deploying it was a little bit mess... so I stood with prox where I dont have to compile anything, and after install all is wotking without any "crafting" in terminal.

@Darkk6969

3 ай бұрын

I use ProxMox because it's easy to deploy. XCP-NG as a "free" version don't make it entirely easy to install. Also, to get all the freebies you have to compile from source which isn't too difficult to do but still. For business users they're better off paying for support to get the ready to deploy package which is fine and should be doing that to support the product's development.

@RK-ly5qj

3 ай бұрын

@@Darkk6969 Agree. I know that Linux Fowlks cant imigine deployment without "compalie sth from scratch" or debugging kernel :D - but there are also normal people on this planet xD

Life after VMware is Proxmox not "XCP-NG", behold I have spoken.

Boooooo.... Dead hypervisor walking... Boo.

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

🥔

Realtek is not a proper NIC

Trying to add the guest-tools, I get stuck at sudo mount /dev/cdrom /mnt/cdrom mount: /mnt/cdrom: mount point does not exist

@LAWRENCESYSTEMS

3 ай бұрын

first do a sudo mkdir /mnt/cdrom to create the location

@LeYuzer

2 ай бұрын

The message is clear, the path does not exist, so you need to create it first