Script Demo

    Demonstration Script

    Background Information

    Welcome everybody to today’s demo.

    • My name is [Your Name], and I am proud to represent VATES
    • Where are you all joining us from today?

    • We greatly value your interest and look forward to demonstrating key components to the Vates Virtualization Management Stack

      Questions for the client

    • What is their infastructure size?

    • What platform are they migrating from?

    About Vates

    Here’s some essential background to get us started:

    • Location: Based in Grenoble, France.
    • Global Team: Though headquartered in France, our team spans the globe with members across North America,Europe and Asia.
    • Open Source: Vates is a committed player in the world of Open Source.

    Vates Virtual Management Stack or VMS

    • Is an all-in-one virtualization solution.
    • At the core of Vates VMS lies the XCP-ng virtualization platform:

    About XCP-ng

    • Launched in 2018: XCP-ng originated as a fork of Citrix XenServer and has since grown into a robust solution
    • Type 1 Hypervisor: XCP-ng is a powerful type 1 hypervisor.

    Our other key component of the VMS stack includes:

    About XO (Xen Orchestra)

    XO is our solution for managing, backing up, and delegating your XCP-ng infrastructure. Why it’s effective:

    • Runs as a virtual machine ( very quick & easy to deploy )
    • Agentless Operation: No additional software installations are required for administrators.
    • Key Features:
      • A web-based user interface (UI).
      • Command-line interface (CLI).
      • REST API for advanced integrations.

    Support & Free Trial

    Our Support & maitenance options include:

    • Four Vates VMS packages to suite your needs - https://vates.tech/pricing-and-support/#features-matrix

      • Essential
      • Essential Plus
      • Pro
      • Enterprise

    • All these plans Include:

      • XCP-ng & XO support
      • Xen Orchestra ( Pre-built appliance / VM )
      • Take a closer look at the features matrix to find which plan works best for your needs.

    • Free Trial

      • Our 30 day trial will give you an opportunity to test out all of these features
      • The trial will also give you access to our support ticket system.

    • Share Useful Links: - https://help.vates.tech/kb/en-us/8/27

      • Our website
      • Getting started tips
      • Documentation
      • Our Blog

    XO Continued

    Xen Orchestra is the centralized management system we will take a look at
    It’s accessed through a web-based administration panel, which we’ll pull up in our browser for this session.

    General Overview

    Before digging deeper into each catagory here as a brief overview.
    From the Home View:

    • Virtual Machines (VMs): The virtualized workloads you run.
    • Hosts: The physical servers powering your infrastructure.
    • Pools: An XCP-ng pool is a collection of one or more physical hosts. Pools share some resources such as storage.
    • Storage: Where all your virtual machines and data reside, referred to as Storage Repositories (SRs).

    Pool Overview

    A resource pool is a collection of one or more hosts/servers.
    From the pool home page we can see a list of the pools XOA is connected to.

    • The Maximum amount of hosts per pool is 64 hosts
    • Pool CPU Support:
      • XCP Pools can mix differrent CPU’s from the within same brand. ( intel or AMD )
      • XCP Pools cannot mix CPU brands; such as AMD vs Intel.
      • Hardware compatibility:

    Pool member view

    Clicking on a pool will bring you to the pool memeber view
    starting with the general tab.

    • The General Tab contains:
      • Host, Storage and VM counts, clicking any of these will take you to a list view of those items.
    • Stats Tab:
      • Graphs for: CPU, Memory, Network and Disk
      • Some hisorical options; such as last 2 hours, last day, last week and year.
    • Network tab:
      • Networks created at the pool level are replicated to each host in the pool.
      • Using the Add a network option
        • Bonds & VLANS can be configured here.
        • Create a VLAN on top of the bond
    • Patches tab:
      • Install Pool patches button installs but does not move or reboot any hosts. (those actions would be preformed manually)
      • Rolling pool update.
        • This option require shared storage and VM tools for all the VMs
        • Xen Orchestra will automatically move VMs around, apply updates and reboot the hosts, without any service interruption.
      • XOSTOR is NOT compatible with rolling pool updates. ( on the radar )
    • Adavanced tab:
      • Pool master selection
      • HA (High avaiability)
      • Multipathing for iSCSI and FC
    • Tool Bar Options
      • Add SR:
        • Click on Add SR see attach options
        • The option will add storage to a pool or host depending on selection, indicated by ( Local )
      • Add VM
      • Add a host to the pool

    Optional ## Hosts Overview:

    An overview of the hosts, selecting a host will take us to the host memeber view.

    Hosts member view

    • General tab:
      • Graph metics for CPU, RAM, NICs and Storage.
      • VM count
    • Stats tab:
      • UI explain
    • Console tab:
      • UI explain
    • Network tab:
      • The network / VLAN created at the pool level are replicated here.
      • Assigning an IP on that network
    • Storage tab:
      • Some shared from the pool level
        • NFS thin
        • iscsi full
    • Patches tab:
      • can install patches here, recommended to stay at pool level to keep them on the same patch level
    • Advanced tab:
      • Netdata Advanced telemetry
      • maintenance mode, which will evacate all the VMs on the host.
      • Hardware & software information
      • Passthru options:
        • GPU passthru works with AMD ( Do not currently support Nvidia vGPU - devs are working with Nvidia )
    • Toolbar Options
      • Run thru the options

    VM overview

    VMs Overview:

    show filters - create and save

    • VM member view:
    • General tab:
      • VM specific stats
      • VM Tags
      • VM Notes
    • Stats tab:
      • UI explain
    • Console tab:
      • UI explain
    • Network tab:
      • guest tools returns IP info
      • adjust network the VM is on
    • Storage tab:
      • adding a disk
      • 2TB VHD size - active development to remove that limitation.
      • RAW format & qcow2
      • resizing a disk ( shutdown to adjust size )
    • Snapshots tab:
      • create snapshot
      • creating VMs from snapshots
      • exporting a snapshot
      • revert a snapshot
      • copy to template - handy for deploying new VM’s from a particular style of VM
    • Backup tab:
      • Displays backup jobs associated with this VM
    • Logs tab:
      • UI explain
    • Advanced tab:
      • Boot order

    Storage Overview

    • An overview of the storages inside of the pool

    Remote Storage

    • On a side note the other type of storage is the remote storage option.
    • The remote storage is used to store backups for certin backup jobs. (Full, Delta and Metadata backusp)
    • The settings > remote page will tell you what you have connected and allow you to create a new connection.
      • Types, mounts, and encrpytion options.

    Backup Overview

    Backup overview

    • The overview will contain a list of backup jobs
    • The Logs contain backup job execution and status
    • Clicking on the status button will give you a pop up dialog with additional details about the backup job.

    New Backup Job

    • This page will create a new backup
    • These types here include:
      • VM Mirror backup
        • The goal is to replicate a backup from one remote to another. For instance, you make your backup to in-house NFS storage, and then replicate to bigger, slower and cheaper storage with a longer retention.
      • XO Config & metadata
        • hosts use a database to store metadata about VMs and their associated resources such as storage and networking. Metadata forms this complete view of all VMs available on your pool. Backing up the metadata of your pool allows you to recover from a physical hardware failure scenario in which you lose your hosts without losing your storage
      • Sequence
        • This will allow to schedule a succession of already created/configured jobs to avoid overlapping job execution.
      • VM backup and replications
        • 5 main types of backup

    VM backup and replications

    This is the main create a backup page, depending on the style of backup selected different options become available.
    Some backup types utilize remote storage, other utilize storage repository’s.

    Rolling Snapshot:

    • This feature is similar to Backups, but it creates a snapshot when planned to do so. It also handles the retention (removing the oldest snapshot). This feature is convenient to rollback to a previous state.

    Backup:

    • You can schedule full backups of your VMs, by exporting them to to an NFS or SMB share. The “retention” parameter allows you to modify how many backups are retained (by removing the oldest one).

    Delta Backup

    • Exports the incremental changes between the current VM disks and previous snapshot
    • When using delta option you can schedule multiple jobs and utilize a 2nd scedule to determine exactly when a full export should happen.

    Disaster Recovery

    • Full replication to another SR
    • The goal is to have your DR VMs ready to boot on a dedicated host.
    • The Full replication includes a simultaneous export and import.

    Continous Replication

    • This feature is an incremental replication system for your VM’s
    • You can replicate a VM every X minutes/hours to any storage repository. ( Cross Pool )
    • If you lose your main pool, you can start the copy on the other side, with very recent data.

    Long-Term backup retention with GFS Strategy

    HealthCheck

    • XO will restore the VM, either by downloading it for a delta/full backup or by cloning it for a disaster recovery or continuous replication and then wait for the guest tools to be loaded before the end of a timeout of 10 minutes (boot + guest tools).
    • A VM without guest tools will fail its health check.
    • The restored VM is then deleted.
    • The NIC is removed to avoid conflicts

    Restore a backup Tab

    • Options to restore your VM’s from the backup list
      • When restoring a backup a dialog box will give you restoration options
        • Destination SR
        • New MAC address etc.

    File restore tab

    • The file restore option is available from your delta style backups.
    • You have the ability to select a particular backup
      • navigate the file-system and restore a file

    XOA Section

    Update the XOA appliance

    • Release channels of latest and stable
    • Support tab:
      • Create a support ticket
      • 16 point check to verify the health of the XOA VM
      • Open a support tunnel

    Jobs

    • Schedule VM and host tasks
      • starting and stopping machines or hosts

    Proxy

    A Xen Orchestra proxy is an architecture component you can deploy in your infrastructure in order to locally handle the data streams of your backup jobs.
    The most current situation in which you might wish to use a XO proxy are:

    • To handle backup data streams in large infrastructure to avoid saturation of the main appliance and split the workload
    • For backup data streams in remote infrastructure to avoid back and forth from the main XOA to the remote location

    Import options

    VM Import:

    • The Import option allows Xen Orchestra to import XVA format and OVA format files.
    • The option to import from URL is also avialable.

    Disk Import option:

    • Disk import option will allow you to import these types of virtual disks
      • VHD
      • VMDK
      • RAW

    From VMware:

    • migration guide - https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2022/10/19/migrate-from-vmware-to-xcp-ng/
    • This guide will review a few different approaches.
      • V2V migration process:
        • An intiial full replciation followed by a delta for the remaining information.
      • The OVA Export/Import method
      • A clonezilla approach
    • Enter your vcenter information and credentials and connect
    • There will be some import considerations with a migration which are scenario dependant.
    • Sharing with us your enviroment in a support ticket in regards to:
      • VSAN
      • VMFS Datastores
      • NFS Datastores
    • Self service overview:
      • The self-service feature allows users to create new VMs.
      • We can assign parts of the XCP resources as general quotes for users to create VM’s on.
    • Settings:
      • Add servers at the server selection screen
      • Manage Users at the user tab
      • Create and manage group assignment
      • Apply Access control lists to groups and users.
    • Plug-ins:
      • Audit plugin
      • SAML / LDAP
      • Load-balancer
      • Alerts
        • CPU or memory alerts for hosts
        • These alerts will can be via email or on the health dashboard

    XOSTOR - vsan type solution.

    • Linbit
    • DRDB
    • Disk replication
    • Minimum 3 hosts no more than 7
      API
    ​
    Published