Pretty awesome post.. makes me want to switch to xenserver from esxi

 

Someone should move this post to Virtualization page!

hey ddeeds,

 

I got this working on my asrock z68m usb3 motherboard with xeon processor, wiht a marvell pcie sata card and a M1015 sas\sata card, but took a bit of doing. 

 

I couldn't pass through the onboard sata controller, just didn't want to work, so I ended up swapping the ssd with XenServer installed on it to the onboard sata controller and moving the two driver that were on the onboard to the marvell controller.  Weird thing is that in order for unraid to detect the pcie sata controller I had to pass through the whole pcie slot not just the sata card, even though I didn't have to do this with M1015 sas\sata card which was sitting in the pcie slot.

 

Anyway, I have one issue remaining on the unraid VM when it's up and running I get the following message:  Tower init: Id "hvc0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes. 

 

Any idea how to fix this?

 

Appreciate your help on this (or from anyone else that knows how to fix it).

Hello Ddeeds, awesome guide! Have followed it to get a Xenserver set up to tinker around with. Got a video card passed on to a Windows 7 install, allowing for bitstreaming audio and HD video playback via Plex. Could not be happier about how that turned out.

 

However, I am having troubles with unRaid. I have an ASrock c226 WS board. It has 6 onboard SATA ports based off of Intel chipset C226, and 2 controllers supporting 2 SATA ports each of Marvell 88SE9172.

 

I can plop an SSD on to the Intel ports and install Xenserver to there, but if I place the SSD on any of the Marvell ports the Xenserver install does not detect the hard drive. I had come across a couple of posts stating older versions of Linux did not properly see the Marvell chipset. Here is a link to one of the posts: http://theangryangel.co.uk/blog/marvell-88se9172-sata3-under-linux-as-of-320/.

 

I would like to boot my datastores from the Marvell chipset SATA ports, and pass along the 6 C226 Chipset SATA ports to unRaid.

 

I also tried passing along the Marvell ports to unRaid, with Xenserver installed on an SSD on the Intel ports. unRaid boots, but does not see any drives on the Marvell controller.

 

Here is a list of devices, you can see the Intel ports as 00:1f.2.

 

 

I am hoping you have some suggestions? Google search has failed me thus far. I would like to utilize all of the onboard stuff before needing to add any SATA controllers.

hey ddeeds,

 

I got this working on my asrock z68m usb3 motherboard with xeon processor, wiht a marvell pcie sata card and a M1015 sas\sata card, but took a bit of doing. 

 

I couldn't pass through the onboard sata controller, just didn't want to work, so I ended up swapping the ssd with XenServer installed on it to the onboard sata controller and moving the two driver that were on the onboard to the marvell controller.  Weird thing is that in order for unraid to detect the pcie sata controller I had to pass through the whole pcie slot not just the sata card, even though I didn't have to do this with M1015 sas\sata card which was sitting in the pcie slot.

 

Anyway, I have one issue remaining on the unraid VM when it's up and running I get the following message:  Tower init: Id "hvc0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes. 

 

Any idea how to fix this?

 

Appreciate your help on this (or from anyone else that knows how to fix it).

 

Hey apgood, just saw your post after posting my own.... Any chance you could enlighten me as to how you passed on the Marvell controller? It appears to be the same controller as my board has, but I cannot get unRaid to see any drives passed along on it. I see no option in my device list for passing the whole PCI port, as you stated...?

Hi ddeeds and ironicbadger

 

been long time since I post in here but I have been keeping my eye on this thread.

 

I have a strange(as it might be)  question for any Linux adept person.

don't know if you remember,but I had a really bad time trying to get UnRaid virtualize on my Server from TAMs.

still not there.

 

 

I have been playing with OpenSuse setup and came across a KVM setup on arch Linux page by chance.

it have several commands  there to test if hardware can handle the virtualiztion for use with KVM.

"https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/KVM"

 

KVM requires that the virtual machine host's processor has virtualization support (named VT-x for Intel processors and AMD-V for AMD processors). You can check whether your processor supports hardware virtualization with the following command:

 

a. lscpu

 

Your processor supports virtualization only if there is a line telling you so.

 

 

b. grep -E "(vmx|svm)" --color=always /proc/cpuinfo

 

If nothing is displayed after running that command, then your processor does not support hardware virtualization, and you will not be able to use KVM.

 

[\quote]

 

I run both of this command with in OpenSuse 12.3 setup several times.

and the strange thing is, when I run it from LiveCD boot or regular install boot

I get

Virtualization type = AMD-V for LSPCU

and a return line for each of the CPU from the second command.

 

but when I setup Xen and run this under Xen kernel I get mixed result every time I run it.

some time I get Virtualization type = para for first command and some time it will be  Virtualization type = none

but second command returns no output. at all.

 

how is it possible?

 

have anyone see such behavior?

 

 

Thank you Ddeeds for wonderful information on how to XenServer & Unraid. I am able to successfully install XenServer 6.2 and trying to download Unraid-5.0.vhd as per your link.

 

------------------------------------

For you to be able to use unRAID in Xen you will need to download the following file:

100mb unRAID-5.0.vhd <--- Download Link Updated 8/29/2013

-------------------------------------

 

The download is failing with Network error. Can somebody please upload this file and post the link.

 

Thanks & Regards,

Vijay.

Thank you Ddeeds for wonderful information on how to XenServer & Unraid. I am able to successfully install XenServer 6.2 and trying to download Unraid-5.0.vhd as per your link.

 

------------------------------------

For you to be able to use unRAID in Xen you will need to download the following file:

100mb unRAID-5.0.vhd <--- Download Link Updated 8/29/2013

-------------------------------------

 

The download is failing with Network error. Can somebody please upload this file and post the link.

 

Thanks & Regards,

Vijay.

 

Uploading now, will have link in a moment. Blast TWC and my awful upload speed...

 

EDIT: Here it is. https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/26979748/Xen-unRAID-5.0.vhd

Tnq so much NotYetRated !!

 

That was quick....

Tnq so much NotYetRated !!

 

That was quick....

 

Not a problem! I am currently going through an install, and am perusing the forums often for info.

 

Good luck with the install!

hey ddeeds,

 

I got this working on my asrock z68m usb3 motherboard with xeon processor, wiht a marvell pcie sata card and a M1015 sas\sata card, but took a bit of doing. 

 

I couldn't pass through the onboard sata controller, just didn't want to work, so I ended up swapping the ssd with XenServer installed on it to the onboard sata controller and moving the two driver that were on the onboard to the marvell controller.  Weird thing is that in order for unraid to detect the pcie sata controller I had to pass through the whole pcie slot not just the sata card, even though I didn't have to do this with M1015 sas\sata card which was sitting in the pcie slot.

 

Anyway, I have one issue remaining on the unraid VM when it's up and running I get the following message:  Tower init: Id "hvc0" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes. 

 

Any idea how to fix this?

 

Appreciate your help on this (or from anyone else that knows how to fix it).

 

Hey apgood, just saw your post after posting my own.... Any chance you could enlighten me as to how you passed on the Marvell controller? It appears to be the same controller as my board has, but I cannot get unRaid to see any drives passed along on it. I see no option in my device list for passing the whole PCI port, as you stated...?

 

My Marvell sata controller is a pcie add in card.  One of the commands (can't remember which one) that was listed in the thread or in one of the other xen threads resulted in a list of hardware devices and their device numbers. From memory it was hierarchial and showed the device number of the slot and then the devices on that port and their numbers. So I just took a punt and added the pcie slot's device number to the pass through list and it worked.

Thank you for all of the information in this thread. I was able to compile a kernel with Xen pciback support for Ubuntu. Ubuntu Server 13.10 has Xen 4.3 available in the repositories so I did not compile Xen from source. I was able to get everything up and running but I'm seeing "kernel: net eth0: Too many frags" every few seconds in the unRAID syslog. The networking is just a standard bridge as suggested by the Xen wiki. Do you recommend doing something different for networking? I didn't have much luck searching for the error and unRAID. I'm mostly wondering how everyone else is configuring their networking if not using Citrix XenServer but just Xen on a Linux distro. Thanks for your help.

Might be an Ubuntu kernel bug. Launchpad.net bug #1162924 seems to cover it. One of the comments suggested:

 

ethtool -K eth0 tx off tso off gso off

in the domU

 

and

ethtool -K eth0 tso off gso off

in the dom0 for each interface.

 

That seems to have cleared the "too many frags" errors.

 

Thanks again to ddeeds and the author of http://blog.ktz.me/ You guys were instrumental in making this happen.

Hi All,

I am able to successfully installed UnRAID VM on XenServer 6.2. After editing extlinux.conf, when rebooted... XenServer is halting on start up screen!! (The boot splash screen that says " Citrix | Xenserver" ).

 

Please advice what went wrong?

 

Thanks.

never mind.. It seems the config edit creating issue. When re-booted with fallback, it got resolved!!!

Thank you for all of the information in this thread. I was able to compile a kernel with Xen pciback support for Ubuntu. Ubuntu Server 13.10 has Xen 4.3 available in the repositories so I did not compile Xen from source. I was able to get everything up and running but I'm seeing "kernel: net eth0: Too many frags" every few seconds in the unRAID syslog. The networking is just a standard bridge as suggested by the Xen wiki. Do you recommend doing something different for networking? I didn't have much luck searching for the error and unRAID. I'm mostly wondering how everyone else is configuring their networking if not using Citrix XenServer but just Xen on a Linux distro. Thanks for your help.

 

Is compiling the kernel required for getting Xen and PCIback to work? I just completed a Ubuntu server 12.10 installation, installed and am able to boot to Xen. Would it benefit me to update to 13.10 and compile a kernel?

Is compiling the kernel required for getting Xen and PCIback to work? I just completed a Ubuntu server 12.10 installation, installed and am able to boot to Xen. Would it benefit me to update to 13.10 and compile a kernel?

 

You can use pciback as a module or built right into the kernel. Some hardware (I think mostly video cards) is grabbed by the host before pciback can detach it for Xen. In cases like that, you definitely want to build the support into the kernel.

 

I started with pciback as a module. I used these instructions to create startup scripts so my SATA controller and USB ports were automatically passed to Xen: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=112013&f=42

 

Ultimately, I compiled a kernel as part of troubleshooting. If you can get pciback to work as a module and you're happy with startup scripts, I don't think there's much advantage to compiling a kernel. However, upgrading to 13.10 may be beneficial if you installed Xen from the Ubuntu apt repositories. I think you need to be on 13.10 in order to get Xen 4.3 from the Ubuntu repositories. If you compiled Xen from source, you can run any version you'd like

Is compiling the kernel required for getting Xen and PCIback to work? I just completed a Ubuntu server 12.10 installation, installed and am able to boot to Xen. Would it benefit me to update to 13.10 and compile a kernel?

 

You can use pciback as a module or built right into the kernel. Some hardware (I think mostly video cards) is grabbed by the host before pciback can detach it for Xen. In cases like that, you definitely want to build the support into the kernel.

 

I started with pciback as a module. I used these instructions to create startup scripts so my SATA controller and USB ports were automatically passed to Xen: http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=112013&f=42

 

Ultimately, I compiled a kernel as part of troubleshooting. If you can get pciback to work as a module and you're happy with startup scripts, I don't think there's much advantage to compiling a kernel. However, upgrading to 13.10 may be beneficial if you installed Xen from the Ubuntu apt repositories. I think you need to be on 13.10 in order to get Xen 4.3 from the Ubuntu repositories. If you compiled Xen from source, you can run any version you'd like

 

 

Excellent! Thanks for the info. I followed your linked guide as well, but ran in to an issue of uploading iso's I needed to install. WinSCP kept crapping out on the transfer on me. Switched back to Xenserver for now, did not feel like messing with it at the time hah.

Having an issue with Xenserver and my VM's.

 

I am using an e3-1245v3 processor, has 4 cores, 8 with HT.

 

Xencenter sees all 8 cores, and I can assign that many to my VM's(winsows 7 and 8 in this case), though inside windows it only ever shows 2 cores.

 

Am I missing something, or doing anything wrong? I am assigning the cores via Xencenter.

Having an issue with passing through the video card.

 

Hardware:

 

Motherboard: MSI H87-G43

CPU: i5-4430

Video Card: Nvidia Geforce 210

 

I've followed the directions for passing through devices. Added my video card to the /boot/extlinux.conf and assigned it to my Windows 7 VM. Restarted xenserver and the xen console comes up on the monitor instead of the Windows 7 VM. I have passed through onboard sata for my unraid vm so I know it works.

 

Am I missing something? Is my cheap video card not supported?

 

Thanks

Having an issue with passing through the video card.

 

Hardware:

 

Motherboard: MSI H87-G43

CPU: i5-4430

Video Card: Nvidia Geforce 210

 

I've followed the directions for passing through devices. Added my video card to the /boot/extlinux.conf and assigned it to my Windows 7 VM. Restarted xenserver and the xen console comes up on the monitor instead of the Windows 7 VM. I have passed through onboard sata for my unraid vm so I know it works.

 

Am I missing something? Is my cheap video card not supported?

 

Thanks

 

 

Many/most Nvidia cards have issues. I think only their professional line really works.

 

However, if I set my motherboard to init first display device as PCI, so that xencenter initially boots on my ATI card, the VM I pass that card through to does not see the card. If I set the motherboard to boot from on board video, the VM with my ATI card boots with it just fine. Hope this helps.

Many/most Nvidia cards have issues. I think only their professional line really works.

 

However, if I set my motherboard to init first display device as PCI, so that xencenter initially boots on my ATI card, the VM I pass that card through to does not see the card. If I set the motherboard to boot from on board video, the VM with my ATI card boots with it just fine. Hope this helps.

 

I was afraid of that. I found a couple of lists of supported nvidia cards and it seemed to be more of the pro line.

 

I will try your method and see if that works at all.

 

Thanks

Hi ddeeds, this is a real fantastic guide to deploy unRAID on XenServer, even also applied to other VM, i'm studying your guide to build my all-in-one home server, just one confusion, according to your post "With the above motherboard, you can passthrough sata ports 1 - 4 and leave port 5 for a datastore drive.", looks like you succeeded to pass through SATA ports, not SATA controller, but i explored all the threads, also some other posts, it's more correct to pass through controller, can you help you confirm? Thanks!

Looks like you succeeded to pass through SATA ports, not SATA controller, but i explored all the threads, also some other posts, it's more correct to pass through controller, can you help you confirm? Thanks!

 

No, I passthrough my Sata Controller. It just so happens with my Motherboard that my 5th Sata Port runs off a seperate Sata controller (also used by the eSata).

 

OK, got it. Seems like my LSI 9211-8i won't waste my money. I plan to pass through it for storage, use my Mobo controller for VM datastore.

OK, got it. Seems like my LSI 9211-8i won't waste my money. I plan to pass through it for storage, use my Mobo controller for VM datastore.

 

There are plenty of people who do just that. Plus, that leaves you all the sata ports on your motherboard which you could use for VMs, ISO Storage Repositories, snapshots, etc.

 

This is what I do. I boot arch from a PCI sata card leaving my 6x mobo ports free for unraid.

 

My mobo has the odd problem detecting the PC I card at boot from a cold start but in general it works well enough.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

Having an issue with Xenserver and my VM's.

 

I am using an e3-1245v3 processor, has 4 cores, 8 with HT.

 

Xencenter sees all 8 cores, and I can assign that many to my VM's(winsows 7 and 8 in this case), though inside windows it only ever shows 2 cores.

 

Am I missing something, or doing anything wrong? I am assigning the cores via Xencenter.

 

I had the same question, Try this:

 

xe vm-param-set platform:cores-per-socket=8 uuid=<VM-UUID>

 

 

source:

http://support.citrix.com/article/CTX126524