Re: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones
This topic comes up many times, it all depends what backend storage, number of spindles, workload type and SLAs during issues. Linked Clones Pros: VM comes up online within 1 minute or less (2 minutes if you are running slower backend storage) You are saving on diskspace, if the rate of change on ROOT is small and data does NOT reside on ROOT volume If you storage uses FAST technology and moves frequently accessed data blocks to something like SSD, initial boot up time improves greatly Cons: You are leveraging VmWare Snapshot technology and changes are written in the form of deltas, which means if you create a 5GB file and delete it, your vmdk delta file will still be 5GB in size and will most likely only grow, Corruption to a parent vmdk on the primary datastore will impact other VMs that are dependent on it - hence reliable storage is needed. Perfomance may degrade overtime if rate of change is high - also pending your storage backend Snapshotting (using vmware snapshot feature), will work, but if you have a complex snapshot three and some delta vmdk under this tree get corrupted, you may loose your data (until good working state) - this issue applies to snapshots in general Full Clones: Gets your independent disks with no delta complexity, at the expense of extra storage and some IO if you dont have FAST technology enabled. Corruption to a vmdk file, affects only 1 VM. If the VM has heavy read and write IO, you should consider running it as full clone as you will avoid delta complexity. There are probably more reasons, just cant think of them now, Regards ilya On 6/11/14, 7:42 AM, Steve Searles wrote: Can someone speak about using Linked Clones vs Full Clones in a production CS environment? What is the performance impact on the parent virtual machine? What type of density can be expected if all the child vm’s are performing read operations from the same snapshot of the parent VM? What are the dangers of using linked clones in this manner? What are the best practices from the CS community? Steve Searles
Volume State Struck at Expunging
Hi all, I'm trying to delete a volume from CloudStack UI. The Volume state struck at Expunging. I changed the Volume State from Expunging to Destroy in cloud.volumes table of cloud database. Within a minute the volume state becomes Expunging. I tried lot of times, but still the state is at Expunging. How can I remove the Volume? Thank you, Suneel Mallela
template download
Hi folks, If a template fails to download (network issues on ssvm) and I then fix my problems. how do I kick off a new attempt at downloading the template ? thanks -sebastien
RE: template download
ssvm stop-start should help thanks prashant -Original Message- From: sebgoa [mailto:run...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:32 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: template download Hi folks, If a template fails to download (network issues on ssvm) and I then fix my problems. how do I kick off a new attempt at downloading the template ? thanks -sebastien
Re: template download
Yeah, so I can answer myself to RTFW: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/SSVM,+templates,+Secondary+storage+troubleshooting Item #5 did it, on the ssvm: service cloud stop, service cloud start (fwiw the restart did not restart) then the download will re-kick. On Jun 12, 2014, at 11:15 AM, Prashant Kumar Mishra prashantkumar.mis...@citrix.com wrote: ssvm stop-start should help thanks prashant -Original Message- From: sebgoa [mailto:run...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:32 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: template download Hi folks, If a template fails to download (network issues on ssvm) and I then fix my problems. how do I kick off a new attempt at downloading the template ? thanks -sebastien
Managing individual ESXi instances
Hi list, I'm new to the CloudStack platform and I'm wondering why the platform does need the vCenter API and can not use ESXi directly, Can anyone elaborate on this? Are there any proposals for adding ESXi integration to CloudStack? Thanks, Ivan
new on this forum
Hi everybody, I'm new , hope to help (and be helped). Who are we? We were the first CloudStack user in Europe. At that time it was from cloud.com and not yet acquired by Citrix. Being the first means; very innovative. That has advantage and disadvantages ;) Kind regards, Cees Doets www.datacenterServices.nlhttp://www.datacenterServices.nl
Re: XenServer + New Guest Network = unable to create vm
Tim, thanks for your answer. Regarding the templates, I did upload both xenserver and kvm system vm templates during the initial cloud install (version 4.1) and during consequent upgrades to 4.2.0 and 4.2.1. Both kvm and xenserver templates are visible under the Templates menu and I have also changed the global settings variable to point the xenserver template to the right systemvm template version. The reason why i've create separate offering for XenServer and used tagging is I wanted to have a separate vm offering, so that the end user could choose which hypervisor he/she wishesh to use. Regarding the MidoNet - first time I am hearing about this and I am certainly not using it on my network. I am not sure where ACS got this and why it is trying to use it for the XenServer vms. In addition to that I am not sure why I do not experience any problems with creating vms if I pre-create a network before using the Add Instance wizard. A question - when I create a new instance on a particular hypervisor with a new network offering, does ACS automatically attemp to create a virtual router on the same hypervisor type as the instance, or does it randomly chooses what host to launch the virtual router? Cheers Andrei - Original Message - From: Tim Mackey tmac...@gmail.com To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Sent: Wednesday, 11 June, 2014 7:25:07 PM Subject: Re: XenServer + New Guest Network = unable to create vm Andrei, When I created a cloud with XenServer, vSphere and KVM, I didn't need create any new service offerings, nor did I need to tag them. Template compatibility should take care of that automatically. What you haven't said is if you uploaded the XenServer system VM template or not. Since you already have a KVM installation, your system VMs are currently KVM based, but the router you need for the XenServer environment needs to be a XenServer system VM. Additionally, in a multi-hypervisor environment, if a system VM needs to restart it could restart on any host, so you'll again need to have both KVM and XenServer system VM templates or force the system VM to be on a specific hypervisor type in the config variables. The error in your log which did catch my eye is that you appear to be using MidoNet and that's KVM only. MidoKura isn't something I've had an opportunity to work with, so I'm not certain what might be required to connect a MidoNet to a normal network. If the XenServer hosts aren't in a separate zone, you might want to look into putting them there. afaik that should at least remove Mido from the mix. -tim On Wed, Jun 11, 2014 at 11:40 AM, Andrei Mikhailovsky and...@arhont.com wrote: Hello guys, Was wondering if someone could help me with a strange issue that I am having with XenServer 6.2 and ACS 4.2.1. I've recently added a new XenServer 6.2 cluster to my existing ACS + KVM setup.I've created a new system and disk offerings using tag xenserver. I've also added this tag to the xenserver host and the nfs primary storage. I have verified that the setup works by successfully creating and staring several vms which are connected to an existing ACS guest network that I have setup for testing. All test vms are being created and started and I can successfully login to them. Having said this, I am, however, unable to create any guest vms on the XenServer if I choose to create a new guest network from the Add Instance wizard. The guest vm is created with status Error and the management server logs show the error that I am pasting at the end of this email. From what I can see, the new network is created with status Allocated and I can see it under the Network section. I do not, however, see a virtual router corresponding to that network. From the management server log I can see the following, which looks very odd and completely untrue (as I can successfully create a number of vms using the same system and disk offering using a pre-created guest network. I've double checked that the XenServer host has the tag xenserver): 2014-06-11 16:16:25,312 DEBUG [allocator.impl.FirstFitAllocator] (Job-Executor-76:job-5195 = [ 10d345f9-2fb2-42ef-850f-4919512d63db ] FirstFitRoutingAllocator) Looking for hosts having tag specified on SvcOffering:xenserver 2014-06-11 16:16:25,314 DEBUG [allocator.impl.FirstFitAllocator] (Job-Executor-76:job-5195 = [ 10d345f9-2fb2-42ef-850f-4919512d63db ] FirstFitRoutingAllocator) Hosts with tag 'xenserver' are:[] Any idea what is going on? Management Server Log: 2014-06-11 16:16:24,962 DEBUG [cloud.api.ApiServlet] (catalina-exec-6:null) ===START=== 192.168.169.91 -- GET command=createNetworkresponse=jsonse ssionkey=6q8QippP1uE3Jd%2BWL8FuA9xcTfM%3DnetworkOfferingId=87e090cb-a134-4d77-b664-ef3858a52f3cname=XenServer-Network-Test-3displayText=XenServer-N etwork-Test-3zoneId=b8c25216-4c2d-4d01-87d8-3673c0ba9780_=1402499785135 2014-06-11
RE: new on this forum
Hi Cees and welcome to the CloudStack User Group Regards Geoff Higginbottom D: +44 20 3603 0542 | S: +44 20 3603 0540 | M: +447968161581 geoff.higginbot...@shapeblue.com -Original Message- From: Cees Doets [mailto:c.do...@datacenterservices.nl] Sent: 12 June 2014 13:34 To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: new on this forum Hi everybody, I'm new , hope to help (and be helped). Who are we? We were the first CloudStack user in Europe. At that time it was from cloud.com and not yet acquired by Citrix. Being the first means; very innovative. That has advantage and disadvantages ;) Kind regards, Cees Doets www.datacenterServices.nlhttp://www.datacenterServices.nl Find out more about ShapeBlue and our range of CloudStack related services IaaS Cloud Design Buildhttp://shapeblue.com/iaas-cloud-design-and-build// CSForge – rapid IaaS deployment frameworkhttp://shapeblue.com/csforge/ CloudStack Consultinghttp://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-consultancy/ CloudStack Infrastructure Supporthttp://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-infrastructure-support/ CloudStack Bootcamp Training Courseshttp://shapeblue.com/cloudstack-training/ This email and any attachments to it may be confidential and are intended solely for the use of the individual to whom it is addressed. Any views or opinions expressed are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of Shape Blue Ltd or related companies. If you are not the intended recipient of this email, you must neither take any action based upon its contents, nor copy or show it to anyone. Please contact the sender if you believe you have received this email in error. Shape Blue Ltd is a company incorporated in England Wales. ShapeBlue Services India LLP is a company incorporated in India and is operated under license from Shape Blue Ltd. Shape Blue Brasil Consultoria Ltda is a company incorporated in Brasil and is operated under license from Shape Blue Ltd. ShapeBlue is a registered trademark.
CloudStack 4.2 KVM - backup VM
Hello, my question is kind of generic, what would be the best why to backup a VM? if server gets corrupted or unable to book I can restore to previous backup? Thanks,
Re: template download
which version of cloudstack are you using? I have a similar issue with cs4.3 On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 11:18 AM, sebgoa run...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah, so I can answer myself to RTFW: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/SSVM,+templates,+Secondary+storage+troubleshooting Item #5 did it, on the ssvm: service cloud stop, service cloud start (fwiw the restart did not restart) then the download will re-kick. On Jun 12, 2014, at 11:15 AM, Prashant Kumar Mishra prashantkumar.mis...@citrix.com wrote: ssvm stop-start should help thanks prashant -Original Message- From: sebgoa [mailto:run...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:32 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: template download Hi folks, If a template fails to download (network issues on ssvm) and I then fix my problems. how do I kick off a new attempt at downloading the template ? thanks -sebastien -- Centralway Factory AG | Konstantinos Karampogias, DevOps | LinkedIn | + 41 44 578 40 00
Re: template download
I had a similar issue with cs4.3 were I pulled down the wrong version of the ssvm's. 4.2 versions instead of 4.3 versions. Even though I kept kicking off a re-download it never actually happened for me. Since this is just a test instance of cloudstack and I don't really care about the data I went extreme. This is what I did I disabled my zone. Destroyed systemvms and router Destroyed all templates Destroyed primary and secondary storage. rm -fr /secondary/* /primary/* Recreated primary and secondary storage Pulled down the Jenkins template with cloud-install-sys-tmplt and finally have full template. I don't think you will actually need to destroy the primary and secondary storage If you can just figure out what vdi's belong to the templates and system vms' and rm those. Since my was a new setup I did not care about the data and went extreme. On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 11:19 AM, Konstantinos Karampogias konstantinos.karampog...@centralway.com wrote: which version of cloudstack are you using? I have a similar issue with cs4.3 On Thu, Jun 12, 2014 at 11:18 AM, sebgoa run...@gmail.com wrote: Yeah, so I can answer myself to RTFW: https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/CLOUDSTACK/SSVM,+templates,+Secondary+storage+troubleshooting Item #5 did it, on the ssvm: service cloud stop, service cloud start (fwiw the restart did not restart) then the download will re-kick. On Jun 12, 2014, at 11:15 AM, Prashant Kumar Mishra prashantkumar.mis...@citrix.com wrote: ssvm stop-start should help thanks prashant -Original Message- From: sebgoa [mailto:run...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:32 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: template download Hi folks, If a template fails to download (network issues on ssvm) and I then fix my problems. how do I kick off a new attempt at downloading the template ? thanks -sebastien -- Centralway Factory AG | Konstantinos Karampogias, DevOps | LinkedIn | + 41 44 578 40 00 -- Derek Page Operations Engineer KAYAK
Re: CloudStack 4.2 KVM - backup VM
Hi, Filesystem snapshots could be handy, if you use LVM for your HV filesystems you can take snapshots of them and back them up. If you are after a commercial solution, Idera comes to mind, they can also do snapshots and enable bare metal recovery. HTH Lucian -- Sent from the Delta quadrant using Borg technology! Nux! www.nux.ro - Original Message - From: motty cruz motty.c...@gmail.com To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Sent: Thursday, 12 June, 2014 4:11:53 PM Subject: CloudStack 4.2 KVM - backup VM Hello, my question is kind of generic, what would be the best why to backup a VM? if server gets corrupted or unable to book I can restore to previous backup? Thanks,
Creating BareMetal templates from vmid via API
Hello, I am trying to create a BareMetal template based on vm id using the CloudStack API. The API documentations suggests that this should be possible by providing the virtual machine ID and a URL for template storage. However, this doesn't work; I followed the API documentation, provided the ostypeid, name, displaytext, virtualmachineid, and url, but I got this error message: “Failed to create private template record, neither volume ID nor snapshot ID were specified. ” So I took a look at the code, and while I did find the code which should support BareMetal template creation from vmid in the BareMetalPxeManager, it is not called from anywhere. The TemplateManager handles CreateTemplateCommands which specify either a volume or a snapshot, but doesn't deal with the BareMetal template creation in any way. Is this omission made intentionally? Is the API capable of handling creation of these templates in some other way, or should support for BareMetal templates be added to the TemplateManager? Regards, -- *Nera Nešić* Backend Developer Mobile: (+354) 782 1337 n...@greenqloud.com a...@greenqloud.com www.greenqloud.com
egress and destination based traffic filtering
Has anyone had any issues/need to filter egress traffic via a vpc router tier? I've noticed all traffic egressing a vpc router is controlled by the OUTPUT chain which doesn't appear to be able to be modified and allows all egress traffic by default. The tier ACL's all appear to operate in the ingress direction only. When entering an acl entry to a tier acl and selecting the egress direction, the rule doesn't seem to get applied to the router's iptables rules. Also, the iptables on the router has a destination field which doesn't appear as an option to configure in CS mgmt. Any ideas when that field will be able to be used in CS? Thanks Brandon Arms DSS
egress and destination based traffic filtering
Has anyone had any issues/need to filter egress traffic via a vpc router tier? I've noticed all traffic egressing a vpc router is controlled by the OUTPUT chain which doesn't appear to be able to be modified and allows all egress traffic by default. The tier ACL's all appear to operate in the ingress direction only. When entering an acl entry to a tier acl and selecting the egress direction, the rule doesn't seem to get applied to the router's iptables rules. Also, the iptables on the router has a destination field which doesn't appear as an option to configure in CS mgmt. Any ideas when that field will be able to be used in CS? Thanks Brandon Arms DSS
how to create a new zone with QuickCloudNoServices network offering?
Hi, All: I am trying to create a new zone using QuickCloudNoServices network offering, but the wizard keeps getting Configuration error when it tries to set up Guest Traffic with following error message: Service Dhcp is not supported by the network offering [Network Offering [14-Guest-QuickCloudNoServices]] How would one create a zone with QuickCloudNoServices then ? I am using CS 4.3.0. Tahnks Yiping
Possible to upload/download a VM?
I'm trying to figure out a way to programmatically upload and download VM images, and I haven't yet found anything in the docs or playing around in the UI that jumps out at me. To download from OpenStack, the story I would follow is 1) Snapshot a VM. This would create an image (or set of images) that I could easily download from glance (the image storage service) 2) Download the resulting image(s). Uploading is just as straightforward: 1) Upload to glance 2) Create an instance. I can see from what I've looked at so far that CloudStack does things a bit differently. Is there a path to what I want to accomplish? Templates Volumes don't look to have quite what I want, but I could be wrong. Looking at the UI, I couldn't even figure out how to upload local files, only files being served up via HTTP or FTP. I'm currently using the .NET SDK and CloudStack 4.2.1. I've got to say, as SDKs go, this one has been pretty great to work with. I'm just stumped by this task. Thanks, Chris
RE: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones
Very infomitive explination, thanks for taking the time. We use VMAX and VNX storage with FAST-CACHE/FASTVP, I would almost rather burn the storage on the vmware VM's for full clones after reading your explination and let the lighter loaded vm's use KVM or XEN which seem to behave in a similar manner. I would hate to loose a whole set of enterprise servers over a single mishap with the snapshot chain. There is also the issue of resizing the ROOT disk which does not seem to be possible with linked clones, (understandably so). It will be nice when root disk resizing is implemented in CS rather than changing the disk in vmware and manually updating the DB. Thanks Again, Steve Searles -Original Message- From: ilya musayev [mailto:ilya.mailing.li...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:18 AM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones This topic comes up many times, it all depends what backend storage, number of spindles, workload type and SLAs during issues. Linked Clones Pros: VM comes up online within 1 minute or less (2 minutes if you are running slower backend storage) You are saving on diskspace, if the rate of change on ROOT is small and data does NOT reside on ROOT volume If you storage uses FAST technology and moves frequently accessed data blocks to something like SSD, initial boot up time improves greatly Cons: You are leveraging VmWare Snapshot technology and changes are written in the form of deltas, which means if you create a 5GB file and delete it, your vmdk delta file will still be 5GB in size and will most likely only grow, Corruption to a parent vmdk on the primary datastore will impact other VMs that are dependent on it - hence reliable storage is needed. Perfomance may degrade overtime if rate of change is high - also pending your storage backend Snapshotting (using vmware snapshot feature), will work, but if you have a complex snapshot three and some delta vmdk under this tree get corrupted, you may loose your data (until good working state) - this issue applies to snapshots in general Full Clones: Gets your independent disks with no delta complexity, at the expense of extra storage and some IO if you dont have FAST technology enabled. Corruption to a vmdk file, affects only 1 VM. If the VM has heavy read and write IO, you should consider running it as full clone as you will avoid delta complexity. There are probably more reasons, just cant think of them now, Regards ilya On 6/11/14, 7:42 AM, Steve Searles wrote: Can someone speak about using Linked Clones vs Full Clones in a production CS environment? What is the performance impact on the parent virtual machine? What type of density can be expected if all the child vm's are performing read operations from the same snapshot of the parent VM? What are the dangers of using linked clones in this manner? What are the best practices from the CS community? Steve Searles
Usage Server Issues
Any experts on the usage server out there? I have a weird problem where my accounts table and user_statistics table are populated but the rest of the tables in the DB are empty (with the exception of usage_job). Does anyone know how to manually fire off the usage job from the command line rather than waiting for it to happen? Any pointers on how to debug this? I have about 40 vm's running in my lab that should be making plenty of data. CS 4.3 Steve Searles
RE: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones
It would also be nice to define this on the cluster or at least the zone level rather than being an all or nothing global setting. Steven Searles, CTO | ssear...@zimcom.net Zimcom Internet Solutions | www.zimcom.net O: 513.231.9500 | D: 513.233.4130 -Original Message- From: Steve Searles [mailto:ssear...@zimcom.net] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:07 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: RE: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones Very infomitive explination, thanks for taking the time. We use VMAX and VNX storage with FAST-CACHE/FASTVP, I would almost rather burn the storage on the vmware VM's for full clones after reading your explination and let the lighter loaded vm's use KVM or XEN which seem to behave in a similar manner. I would hate to loose a whole set of enterprise servers over a single mishap with the snapshot chain. There is also the issue of resizing the ROOT disk which does not seem to be possible with linked clones, (understandably so). It will be nice when root disk resizing is implemented in CS rather than changing the disk in vmware and manually updating the DB. Thanks Again, Steve Searles -Original Message- From: ilya musayev [mailto:ilya.mailing.li...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:18 AM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones This topic comes up many times, it all depends what backend storage, number of spindles, workload type and SLAs during issues. Linked Clones Pros: VM comes up online within 1 minute or less (2 minutes if you are running slower backend storage) You are saving on diskspace, if the rate of change on ROOT is small and data does NOT reside on ROOT volume If you storage uses FAST technology and moves frequently accessed data blocks to something like SSD, initial boot up time improves greatly Cons: You are leveraging VmWare Snapshot technology and changes are written in the form of deltas, which means if you create a 5GB file and delete it, your vmdk delta file will still be 5GB in size and will most likely only grow, Corruption to a parent vmdk on the primary datastore will impact other VMs that are dependent on it - hence reliable storage is needed. Perfomance may degrade overtime if rate of change is high - also pending your storage backend Snapshotting (using vmware snapshot feature), will work, but if you have a complex snapshot three and some delta vmdk under this tree get corrupted, you may loose your data (until good working state) - this issue applies to snapshots in general Full Clones: Gets your independent disks with no delta complexity, at the expense of extra storage and some IO if you dont have FAST technology enabled. Corruption to a vmdk file, affects only 1 VM. If the VM has heavy read and write IO, you should consider running it as full clone as you will avoid delta complexity. There are probably more reasons, just cant think of them now, Regards ilya On 6/11/14, 7:42 AM, Steve Searles wrote: Can someone speak about using Linked Clones vs Full Clones in a production CS environment? What is the performance impact on the parent virtual machine? What type of density can be expected if all the child vm's are performing read operations from the same snapshot of the parent VM? What are the dangers of using linked clones in this manner? What are the best practices from the CS community? Steve Searles
Re: Usage Server Issues
Can you share logs? I don’t know if you can start it manually. But, you can definitely tweak the configs to start every 10 min. http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/projects/cloudstack-administration/en/latest/usage.html ~Rajani On 13-Jun-2014, at 8:41 am, Steve Searles ssear...@zimcom.netmailto:ssear...@zimcom.net wrote: Any experts on the usage server out there? I have a weird problem where my accounts table and user_statistics table are populated but the rest of the tables in the DB are empty (with the exception of usage_job). Does anyone know how to manually fire off the usage job from the command line rather than waiting for it to happen? Any pointers on how to debug this? I have about 40 vm's running in my lab that should be making plenty of data. CS 4.3 Steve Searles
Re: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones
When the full clone feature was initially introduced, i asked if full clone - can be per cluster or even per VM level. Unfortunately no-one listened :( These days, this inflexibility becomes very annoying. You can copy the parent vmdk from another datastore or from secondary store - its just an annoyance and downtime to end users. Considering that 95% of work has already been done to support full clones, extending it to a cluster level - should not be too hard. I will kindly ask Citrix to consider putting it on the roadmap. On 6/12/14, 8:18 PM, Steve Searles wrote: It would also be nice to define this on the cluster or at least the zone level rather than being an all or nothing global setting. Steven Searles, CTO | ssear...@zimcom.net Zimcom Internet Solutions | www.zimcom.net O: 513.231.9500 | D: 513.233.4130 -Original Message- From: Steve Searles [mailto:ssear...@zimcom.net] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 11:07 PM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: RE: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones Very infomitive explination, thanks for taking the time. We use VMAX and VNX storage with FAST-CACHE/FASTVP, I would almost rather burn the storage on the vmware VM's for full clones after reading your explination and let the lighter loaded vm's use KVM or XEN which seem to behave in a similar manner. I would hate to loose a whole set of enterprise servers over a single mishap with the snapshot chain. There is also the issue of resizing the ROOT disk which does not seem to be possible with linked clones, (understandably so). It will be nice when root disk resizing is implemented in CS rather than changing the disk in vmware and manually updating the DB. Thanks Again, Steve Searles -Original Message- From: ilya musayev [mailto:ilya.mailing.li...@gmail.com] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2014 2:18 AM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: Vmware Full Clones vs Linked Clones This topic comes up many times, it all depends what backend storage, number of spindles, workload type and SLAs during issues. Linked Clones Pros: VM comes up online within 1 minute or less (2 minutes if you are running slower backend storage) You are saving on diskspace, if the rate of change on ROOT is small and data does NOT reside on ROOT volume If you storage uses FAST technology and moves frequently accessed data blocks to something like SSD, initial boot up time improves greatly Cons: You are leveraging VmWare Snapshot technology and changes are written in the form of deltas, which means if you create a 5GB file and delete it, your vmdk delta file will still be 5GB in size and will most likely only grow, Corruption to a parent vmdk on the primary datastore will impact other VMs that are dependent on it - hence reliable storage is needed. Perfomance may degrade overtime if rate of change is high - also pending your storage backend Snapshotting (using vmware snapshot feature), will work, but if you have a complex snapshot three and some delta vmdk under this tree get corrupted, you may loose your data (until good working state) - this issue applies to snapshots in general Full Clones: Gets your independent disks with no delta complexity, at the expense of extra storage and some IO if you dont have FAST technology enabled. Corruption to a vmdk file, affects only 1 VM. If the VM has heavy read and write IO, you should consider running it as full clone as you will avoid delta complexity. There are probably more reasons, just cant think of them now, Regards ilya On 6/11/14, 7:42 AM, Steve Searles wrote: Can someone speak about using Linked Clones vs Full Clones in a production CS environment? What is the performance impact on the parent virtual machine? What type of density can be expected if all the child vm's are performing read operations from the same snapshot of the parent VM? What are the dangers of using linked clones in this manner? What are the best practices from the CS community? Steve Searles
RE: Usage Server Issues
You can use generateUsageRecords api . It Generates usage records. This will generate records only if there any records to be generated, i.e if the scheduled usage job was not run or failed Request parameters Parameter Name Description Required enddate End date range for usage record query. Use -MM-dd as the date format, e.g. startDate=2009-06-03.true startdate Start date range for usage record query. Use -MM-dd as the date format, e.g. startDate=2009-06-01. true domainidList events for the specified domain. false Response Tags Response Name Description displaytext any text associated with the success or failure success true if operation is executed successfully Hope this will help . If you can share the logs it will be easier for us to help more. Thanks Shweta -Original Message- From: Rajani Karuturi [mailto:rajani.karut...@citrix.com] Sent: Friday, June 13, 2014 10:36 AM To: users@cloudstack.apache.org Subject: Re: Usage Server Issues Can you share logs? I don't know if you can start it manually. But, you can definitely tweak the configs to start every 10 min. http://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/projects/cloudstack-administration/en/latest/usage.html ~Rajani On 13-Jun-2014, at 8:41 am, Steve Searles ssear...@zimcom.netmailto:ssear...@zimcom.net wrote: Any experts on the usage server out there? I have a weird problem where my accounts table and user_statistics table are populated but the rest of the tables in the DB are empty (with the exception of usage_job). Does anyone know how to manually fire off the usage job from the command line rather than waiting for it to happen? Any pointers on how to debug this? I have about 40 vm's running in my lab that should be making plenty of data. CS 4.3 Steve Searles
