[PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly

[Gerald Brandt]

Hi,

We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't have all the computers available to me at the start, since migration will use the existing XenServer computers.

To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the fourth server.

Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?

Thanks,
Gerald

ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.

[Kurt Bauer]

Hi,

we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie. changing fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what we did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long as it
has no guests.

Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't have all the computers available to me at the start, since migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Gerald Brandt]

Hi,

I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.

Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes will move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a kernel, so I'm looking at http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/

Any performance issues?

Gerald


----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie. changing fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what we did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long as it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Angel Docampo]

Hi,

Here we user as third|quorum machine, a VMWare machine. It worked
perfectly as far as it does not host any VM itself.

To migrate linux machines, we created a new VM on proxmox, booted it up
with a sysresCD and then netcat the whole system from the xen VM to the
new PVE machine.

Hope it helps,

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.
Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes will move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a kernel, so I'm looking at http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/
Any performance issues?
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie. changing fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what we did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long as it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Gerald Brandt]

Hi,

Is it possible to create a cluster of three Proxmox servers, without HA, (first 1 server, then 2, then 3, over time), and add HA once there are enough Proxmox servers to do HA?

Gerald

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:08:43 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
Here we user as third|quorum machine, a VMWare machine. It worked
perfectly as far as it does not host any VM itself.
To migrate linux machines, we created a new VM on proxmox, booted it
up with a sysresCD and then netcat the whole system from the xen VM
to the new PVE machine.
Hope it helps,

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.
Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes
will
move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of
my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a
kernel,
so I'm looking at
http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/
Any performance issues?
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie.
changing
fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what
we
did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the
problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the
cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long
as
it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix
XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual
machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

_______________________________________________
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

--
Angel Docampo
Datalab Tecnologia, s.a.
Castillejos, 352 - 08025 Barcelona
Tel. [phone] - Ext: 706
Mob. 670.299.381
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Gerald Brandt]

Hi Angel,

Were you transferring HVM or PVM servers to KVM?

Gerald

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:08:43 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
Here we user as third|quorum machine, a VMWare machine. It worked
perfectly as far as it does not host any VM itself.
To migrate linux machines, we created a new VM on proxmox, booted it
up with a sysresCD and then netcat the whole system from the xen VM
to the new PVE machine.
Hope it helps,

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.
Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes
will
move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of
my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a
kernel,
so I'm looking at
http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/
Any performance issues?
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie.
changing
fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what
we
did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the
problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the
cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long
as
it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix
XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual
machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

_______________________________________________
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

--
Angel Docampo
Datalab Tecnologia, s.a.
Castillejos, 352 - 08025 Barcelona
Tel. [phone] - Ext: 706
Mob. 670.299.381
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Angel Docampo]

Hi Gerald,

I'm pretty sure that were both full and paravirtualized machines, but
primarily were HVM.

Regards,

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi Angel,
Were you transferring HVM or PVM servers to KVM?
Gerald
------------------------------------------------------------------------
*Sent: *Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:08:43 AM
*Subject: *Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
Here we user as third|quorum machine, a VMWare machine. It worked
perfectly as far as it does not host any VM itself.
To migrate linux machines, we created a new VM on proxmox, booted
it up with a sysresCD and then netcat the whole system from the
xen VM to the new PVE machine.
Hope it helps,
Hi,
I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.
Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes will move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a kernel, so I'm looking athttp://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/
Any performance issues?
Gerald
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie. changing
fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what we
did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the
cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long as
it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user
--
*Angel Docampo
*
*Datalab Tecnologia, s.a.*
Castillejos, 352 - 08025 Barcelona
Tel. [phone] - Ext: 706
Mob. 670.299.381
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Kurt Bauer]

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
I'd considered that, but I'm having trouble finding a system that supports VT-d/VT-x.
Any hiccups converting Xen to KVM? I imagine the Windows boxes will move easily enough, just using clonezilla or similar. The rest of my servers are Ubuntu based, and PVM's so I'll need to add a kernel, so I'm looking at http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/

That's quite similiar to what we did, installing kernel and grub in the
paravirtualized XEN-guest, then all the dd, parted, losetup, kpartx
stuff to get the lvm based XEN Host into an image ( no fancy grub stuff
here), moving the image to whatever you want (keep it raw, convert to
qcow2 or as in our case import into ceph cluster), booting the virtual
machine created in proxmox (with the image attached correctly) from
OS-CD (or any rescue CD), do a rescue (ie. mount vda1, execute a shell
there, do a grub-install and update-grub), and ready you are to boot up
a working KVM clone of your XEN guest.
Whilst the dd and parted step you can do all kinds of fancy stuff, like
merging partitions, resizing, adding,...

Post by Gerald Brandt
Any performance issues?

In which regard?

Post by Gerald Brandt
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie. changing fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what we did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long as it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Gerald Brandt]

----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:18:58 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly

Post by Gerald Brandt
Any performance issues?

In which regard?

Noticable slowdowns/or speed ups on disk IO or memory, etc?

Post by Gerald Brandt
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie.
changing
fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what
we
did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the
problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long
as
it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user

[Kurt Bauer]

Post by Gerald Brandt
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 9:18:58 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly

Post by Gerald Brandt
Any performance issues?

In which regard?

Noticable slowdowns/or speed ups on disk IO or memory, etc?

You mean going from XEN PVM to Proxmox, ie. KVM?
Hmm, to be honest we haven't done any speed or perfomance tests,
comparing the two. And besides changing the virtualisation
infrastructure, we also changed the storage infrastructure (from local
LVM to ceph) and all in all we didn't see any degradation of
performance, although this is more of a gut feeling than something I can
proof with figures and numbers.

Post by Gerald Brandt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Gerald
----- Original Message -----

Sent: Thursday, October 24, 2013 8:42:54 AM
Subject: Re: [PVE-User] Moving from XenServer to Proxmox... slowly
Hi,
we did pretty much the same thing over the past weeks, ie.
changing
fom
XEN to KVM (Proxmox) reusing the hardware already in place and
production. But we didn't went down the 2-Node cluster road, what
we
did
instead was, that we used an old server machine as a third node, just
for the sake of quorum and not having to deal with all the
problems,
that may occur on a 2-Node cluster. No guests on that machine and as
soon as the 3rd production machine was free, we added it to the cluster
and removed the old one.
I guess performance is not an issue for that 3rd machine, as long
as
it
has no guests.
Hope that helps a little,
best regards,
Kurt

Post by Gerald Brandt
Hi,
We've pretty much made the decision to move from Citrix XenServer
to KVM (Proxmox) for our Virtual solution. Unfortunately, I don't
have all the computers available to me at the start, since
migration will use the existing XenServer computers.
To start, I'll have two servers, using a single iSCSI, in an HA
cluster. Once they are running and some of the virtual machines
are migrated, I can add a third server. Finally, I can add the
fourth server.
Is there anything I need to look out for when creating the 2 server
HA cluster and then converting it to a 3 and 4 node cluster?
Has anyone done this, and created a HOWTO I can follow?
Thanks,
Gerald
ps: Been using Citrix XenServer since Jan 2009. We've had enough
issues with VM disk corruption to haunt me for year (using
LVMoveriSCSI). It's a bloody house of cards.
_______________________________________________
pve-user mailing list
http://pve.proxmox.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/pve-user