Exploring XCP-ng from a VMware User's Perspective

there are a lot of people right now who are either personally and or professionally trying to figure out what they're going to do now that broadcom is making vmw untenable to use for home labs and small to medium businesses if you don't know what I'm talking about refer to my video over here yes that is me with a giant beard thankfully there are a lot of options in terms of virtualization for your business and HB and as promised we're going to start looking into comparing and evaluating them against our beloved VMware let's get to it hey there home labers and celf posters Rich here this video is the first of probably many videos around evaluating your options if you're coming from the world of VMware and esxi with this video in particular being focused on XC PNG my background is in VMware so I'm going to be looking this from that perspective and give you my thoughts and opinions along the way as we always do I think we should start with some background on xcp andg and the history of the product first the origin story of xpg begins with the Zen Cloud platform and its commercial counterpart citric Zen server Zen server was made open source in an effort to cut costs differentiate itself and compete with VMware and Microsoft which were the dominant players in the virtualization space however this led to unexpected challenges Citrix found that while users appreciated the new features of the open- source Enterprise product they were less inclined to pay for maintenance and support go figure this led to a decrease in revenue and a shift in cetric approach towards Open Source by 2017 Citrix reintroduced limitations to the features available in the free version of the product on March 31st 2018 the initial release of xcbg was made this marked the official start of the project and its journey in the open source virtualization space in the intervening years xcp saw multiple version releases evolving with new features and improvements this period was marked by significant growth in the Project's community and user base in January 2020 xcp joined the Linux Foundation via the Zen project marking a major Milestone and further solidifying its place in the open source Community the project continues to be actively developed with ongoing work on security enhancements compatibility with new architectures like Risk 5 and integration with various Technologies and platforms especially after the drama we've been experiencing with broadcom it's refreshing to see a project that's fully open sourced and unlikely to have the world turned upside down by corporate but history aside how does xcp compare to esxi or even Venter for that matter well let's talk about it let's start with architecture both xcp and VMware esxi are type 1 hypervisors however there are key differences in their deployment methodology IES VMware esxi is very Lightweight by Design only containing a minimum footprint to function and once booted runs solely from Ram all of the Vare esxi kernel is closed Source X cpng is based on the Linux kernel and is also lightweight but unlike esxi after the boot process loads the kernel and other necessary components into RAM xpg continues to use dis storage for various operational needs onto performance while performance is highly dependent on what's running in your workloads these days performance between the two hypervisors looks to be nearly equivalent there are some historical reports where users have reported IO performance issues with xcp andg When comparing identical workloads between the two hypervisors now let's talk about usability in my opinion here is where I think esxi easily outperforms xcp and by default every deployed esxi host has a built-in web-based HTML 5 guey for single Host deployments this guey is all you need to manage your host build and manage VMS V switches and data stores no extra steps are needed in contrast a fresh deployment of xcp has no Local web goei for host management instead to manage your xcp host you need to deploy Zen Orchestra thankfully xcp makes that relatively Easy by assisting you with spinning up a VM of the Zen Orchestra Appliance also known as xoa it's tough to compare these two management interfaces with each other for a few reasons one XO is more than just a single host management guey its functionality is more akin to vmor V Center than a single host management UI that comes out of the box with esxi you absolutely do use Zen archestra to manage a single host host but you can also manage multiple xpg hosts from within a single instance of Zen Orchestra manage pools the xcp equivalent of clusters and VMware migrate VMS between hosts run backups and so on more about features next esxi offers a wide range of advanced features including distributed resource scheduling High availability fault tolerance v motion which is vmware's term for live migration of VMS storage v motion and API control however all of these features require additional licensing to unlock by default the best you get with the free version of esxi is basic VM management out of the box in contrast xcp includes clustering live migration of VMS VM backup functionality and automation via API calls along with all the standard VM management you'd expect from a hypervisor for the most part with the exception of DRS xpg is nearly feature complete with the licensable features of VMware out of the box for free now let's talk about scalability esxi is very well known for its scalability and is used in some of the largest virtual environments in the world esxi is fully capable of managing thousands of VMS without issue and when adding vcenter into the equation has the ability to scale clusters of virtual hosts out to hundreds of hosts with many thousands of VMS no sweat xpg also features scaling but its adoption in very large or complex environments is less common compared to esxi Zen Orchestra has the same concept for clusters called pools and will service and manage large collections of hosts and VMS and for the business-minded viewers let's talk about support VMware offers extensive professional support training certification an extremely well-maintained public knowledge base and a large community behind it that being said with the changes in the new ownership of broadcom it's unclear exactly how that will affect product support access to the KB and so on xcp being open source relies more on Community Support though professional support is available through vendors including Vates the company actively developing xcp the community is passionate active and growing and lastly cost here's where the rubber meets the road and for vmore esxi the most recent changes being made made to licensing by broadcom Will effectively put vmore out of the reach of most people it's very likely the reason you're watching this video now the esxi free hypervisor at the time in this video at least is still free with limitations xpg however is 100% free and open source with most features available without cost professional support services are available for a fee but overall it will be more cost-effective especially for smaller pool deployments of multiple xng hosts or those with budget constraints all right overview out of the way here let's take a look at some real world examples of the two side by side along with my thoughts on both as I mentioned earlier xcb does not have an embedded host management guey that exists with the hypervisor so we'll be looking at xoa in terms of comparisons where applicable and I'll be sure to call them out as we go through them the first stop here is to take a look at the consoles of both and compare here are both consoles side by side at a glance their layouts share similarities but as we're going to discuss there are big differences between the two let's start with the incumbent esxi the esxi console provides some information about the physical host like esxi version information OEM Hardware manufacturer processor type count and speed and RAM amount on the host as well as the URL for web management in terms of configuration pressing F2 and logging into the host provides you with very basic management functionality in essence the most you can do is configure or change your management interface settings enable support functionality like enabling SSH or local prompt access enabling lockdown mode and that's about it via F12 you can manage shutting down or rebooting the host itself outside of these basic functions VMware expects anything beyond this to happen from within the built-in HTML 5 management web GUI in contrast xpg provides not only a wealth of information about the host but also the ability to essentially manage nearly all aspects of the host configuration from the console for comparison purposes I want to point out that X cpng like esxi provides you with the means to configure your management interface for the host set DNS enable disable SSH restart or shut down your your host and so much more I want to touch on a few key features and options specifically to call them out the first option that should have you asking why doesn't esxi have this is the ability to see the VMS on the host and start and stop them you can also do storage management create join leave a resource pool and get detailed information about the hardware in your host including CPU socket core count speed Ram quantity and dim slot information local storage HBA information and bios and BMC version information and lastly VM backup and restore functionality all from the console X cpg clearly has the upper hand here with what you can do from the console of the host as a longtime VMware user I just can't believe all the functionality available to you it is absolutely impressive and honestly I don't know why VMware didn't steal that idea a long time ago but consoles aside let's dig into their respective management goys and the differences between the two now as I mentioned earlier esxi has a built-in web Management console and XC PNG does not so on the XC PNG side we'll be using gen Orchestra Appliance or as it's known xoa in the comparison here with the caveat that by the nature of these two approaches it's not exactly Apples to Apples I'll be calling out the differences as we move through this again let's start with the incumbent esxi this is the web management UI of esxi landing on the main dashboard you're given a summary of all of your host State usage V switch and Port group configs data stores mounted and free space system information and add a glance graph of overall CPU and RAM usage on the host on the bottom in the recent tasks pane are all of the active and recent tasks that are running or have occurred on the left is your navigation pan where you can dig deeper into your host configuration and monitor your performance Hardware events logs and more in the virtual machine tab you get a full list of the running VMS on the host details about storage usage guest OS config host name CPU and memory usage when you drill down into a specific VM you get health utilization and configuration information snapshot and access to the console as well as all the standard VM management functions like power suspend restart and Hardware configuration options in the storage tab you get an add glance view of your mounted data stores their utilization and type as well as the ability to create new data stores across the top you view and manage your virtual storage adapters devices and so on when drilling down into a configured data store you view further information about the storage type location host connected virtual machines connected to it and with the data store browser at the top browse the storage system upload download data and otherwise manage the data store as desired the last tab to touch on in the web guey is the networking tab at a glance you see all of the port groups configured on your host and drilling down into any of them provides you with detailed information about the port group VMS connected V switch that serves the group and a visualization of how the VMS with network interfaces assigned to that Port group connect to the physical Network backing out to the virtual switches Tab and viewing your configured V switches you get an incredibly Rich level of information about all virtual networks on your host the VMS connected to them and how they connect to your physical networks the main networking tab is also where you can view and manage physical network adapters on your host VM kernel Nicks TCP stacks and firewall rules in contrast the xoa interface feels less polished and cluttered compared to the esxi host management web interface again it's important to note that Zen Orchestra does host management and essentially all of the management functionality of Venter so by its scope it's going to have more tabs options and sections this is the XA dashboard which gives you a basic overview of the number of pools hosts VMS running RAM usage vcpu assigned storage used as well as general alarm tasks users and VM power State at a glance let's take a look at Host management specifically since that's what we were just looking at in esxi to manage your host we need to head up to home and then we can choose from VMS hosts pools templates and storage tabs in the VM tab we get a basic list view of the VMS currently running on the host clicking on a VM allows you to begin managing that virtual machine the first tab the general tab gives you a four-line graph showing you at a glance CPU Ram Network and storage utilization and a ton of unnecessary white space below at the top you can control your VM state with start stop restart migrate snapshot export and copy functions stats gives you better performance details of the running VM broken down by typical resource category in very clear easy to read graphs the console tab gives you access to the running VMS console and the same four line graphs from the general tab unlike VMware esxi there's no ability to pop out the console of a running VM or a piece of software like the VMware remote console to independently have access to the console the network tab shows you the networks your VM is connected to and allows you to add or remove virtual network interfaces the disc tab shows you information about the vm's virtual discs as well as the ability to add delete and attach a pre-existing disc the snapshot tab is kind of self-explanatory both xpg and esxi allow you to take snapshots and both will allow you to snap with or without active memory there's Nuance here between the two hypervisors in terms of snapshots that I want to take a moment and discuss when snapping without memory both hypervisors will create their snapshots quickly without interruption to the VM being snapped however in X cpng when you attempt to snap a VM with memory you're presented with a warning that doing so will make the VM unusable until the snapshot is completed which isn't something you have to worry about in esxi it's not a deal breaker by any means but it's something you should be aware of if you're accustomed to making snaps with memory and VMware the backup tab is where you'd see the status of any backups of this particular VM yes one of the biggest differentiators between esxi and xpg is a completely free built-in native means of backing up your virtual machines logs show you the log events that have occurred for the VM of which I don't have any displayed here the advanced tab allows you to configure specific Advanced features for your VM like setting boot order changing virtualization modes enabling ha for the particular VM selecting or changing Nick types creating a virtual TPM device and a a ton more options suffice to say you have all the same information and configurability in x cpng that you do in esxi with a far more cluttered and spread out experience I do however appreciate the ability to create virtual TPMS as that's not something available in esxi without Venter let's move on now to the host management and the host tab back up to home and then the host tab we see just one xpg host I have named xcp clicking on the host gives us the same familiar information we saw in the general tab for a VM with the addition of a call out for the total number of vmss and a graphical bar to indicate the current RAM usage of the host under the stats tab we get the same information we saw from the stats under VM but from a host level in the console tab we can access the Zen server hypervisor directly which again coming from the world of VMware is pretty neat the network tab is where you build out your network connectivity on the host pifs are essentially the combination of Port groups and V switches in esxi terminology you can create multiple pffs that use the same network interface as long as you configure your vlans on the piff to segment your traffic appropriately compared to esxi xcp and's Virtual network configuration is simpler and less complicated big differences here conceptually between the two hypervisors in terms of virtual network configuration esxi networking is a lot more complicated than xcp but it's also more extensible in configurability I also think that the approach that VMware takes in terms of providing A visual representation of how VMS connect to Virtual networks is superior to xo's list approach on the same tab we also have private networks a private network is is a virtual Network within the host itself and is only available internally on that host these networks provide the flexibility of a truly segmented internal host only Network for VMS to communicate on the storage tab gives you a list of all of the mounted storage systems for your host you can create new storage mounts or in xcp terminology SRS which stands for storage repository X cpng supports the same sand and Nas connectivity you'd get from esxi for ice scuzzi fiber channel and NFS mounts as well as in-host storage moving on the patches tab is where you'd be provided information about available patches for your xcp host except this feature is behind a pay wall this feature is only available in the starter Edition and above which is $85 a month at the time of this video you have three options for updating your host pay the $85 a month for a starter license and use the xoa guey drop to the console of your xpg host and issue a yum update command or compile Zen Orchestra from Source something I'll talk about a bit later moving on the logs tab provides you with logs from the host which is pretty self-explanatory I suppose lastly the advanced tab where we can configure Advanced features for the host as well as see more detailed host information about the hardware and so on our next stop is pools a pool in xcp andg terms is akin to a cluster in VMware again remember xoa is more like V Center than a single host management guey if you had multiple xpg hosts you can collect them into pools and build out High availability clusters for your VMS as well as live Mig great VMS between hosts in the pool this video isn't intended to do a comparison between Zen Orchestra and V Center though let me know in the comments if that interests you and we can certainly do that but I do want to stop here and just point out it is pretty damn cool that you can build a highly available pool of xcp host with live migration and everything without any licensing costs involved templates are preconfigured virtual machine configurations these templates are designed to simplify the process of creating new VMS by providing a set of predefined settings and configurations for a particular guest operating system if you're familiar with creating VMS in esxi you'll remember number one of the steps in VM creation is to select the operating system that will be running in the virtual machine in xap we see these presented differently but the intention is the same the last section is the storage section not to be confused with the storage subsection under the host section this section provides basically a list of all the SRS or storage repositories that are attached to all the hosts you have associated with your Zen Orchestra Appliance clicking on one of the SRS in the list drills down into macro information like utilization performance stats virtual discs housed within the Sr hosts attached to it logs and advanced information that includes the ability to reclaim freed space enable a maintenance mode and remove the SR entirely so that's a comparison of the two interfaces now I'm going to talk about the things that I liked dislike and the good and bad again coming from my VMware esxi perspective feel free to disagree with me in the comments of this video or on our Discord server after using xtp andg for a solid 2 weeks now and getting comfortable with all facets of host and Via management I can say that it will effectively satisfy your needs to replace ES XI it has all the general bells and whistles features and options and honestly a lot more out of the box so let's talk about the things that I don't like the first thing I want to address is the user experience Zen Orchestra as an interface and a user experience isn't great the first impression I had when I logged into xoa was Yep this looks like open source which is to say it looks a lot like many other generic open source web goys that I've used in the past to make my point here here's xoa side by side with cockpit you see what I'm talking about there's so much wasted space and too many sections and subsections within them I'm a big believer in open source and I've seen some just incredible graphical user interfaces in open source so it's not like this couldn't be better and before you tell me oh that's such a dumb thing to complain about it's functional and that's all that matters you're right it is functional and it's ugly and I don't enjoy using it which is the opposite of what any ux or UI designer should want from their product the organization of information how it's presented and how buried some of the sections are feels like the user experience is an afterthought the next thing I don't like about xoa specifically is what feels like a completely irrational approach to what's available for free in xoa Appliance and what's behind a paywall tell me why under the dashboard section visualizations and statistics are behind a premium license but you can dig down into pool host and VM levels and get stats tell me why host updates are behind a starter licensed pay wall but xoa updates are not there seems like there's pay walls everywhere in x0a requiring depending on what feature a variety of different levels and costs it's just annoying yes you can compile an entire Zen Orchestra application from source code and then get all of those features and I know there's even a community built unsupported containerized version that you can run on it as well that's great but what I'm asking you here is why if the source code is available and you can compile essentially a fully unlocked version of Zen Orchestra and because it's open source you're not breaking any rules doing it then why isn't the standard XA Appliance just fully unlocked and Vates can charge your subscription for various levels of support cuz I don't know if anyone's told Vates this but the kind of people who' be running xcp and in their homb are the kind of people who aren't going to Flinch at spinning up a container or compiling their own unlocked version of Zen Orchestra thankfully this is basically where my complaints end xcp has so much going for it otherwise starting from the top the sheer amount of configurability and host management you get from the console is bananas compared to esxi again seriously I have no idea why VMware never stole that idea you can create pools of hosts live migrate workloads around and enable High availability and that's the stuff of Venter and it's built in oh and xpg has native VM backup functional built in as well no need to have third party backup software to protect your workloads again another thing that required a license to do in VMware there's also the Hub in x0a that provides single click easy to deploy standard VMS and in the most recent version of xoa they added a native inapp migration tool to migrate VMS from vmore into xcp andg which for the two VMS I ran it against seamlessly migrated across from my Venter into xcp andg without issue so in summation if you are a soon to be X VMware person or company that uses VMware look looking for an alternative direction to migrate to xcp has a lot going forward and is worth checking out one last thing to note I'll be digging into proxmox next so keep an eye out for that video and that friends will do it for this video if you liked it throw us a sub and a like and if you have a beef with anything I've said here let me know in the comments below special thank you to YouTube members you help keep the lights on and we thank you for it if you'd like to help support the channel consider becoming a member or buy some of our swag it all helps us keep making these videos and now that you finish watching this video how about checking out this playlist over here of other great HB and self-hosting videos we've done in the past if you're looking for your next great H lab idea we can [Music] help

Channel: 2GuysTek

Views: 88,810

Keywords: Exploring XCP-ng from a VMware user's perspective, Life after VMware, XCP-ng vs. VMware, XCP-ng, can XCP-ng replace ESXi, How does XCP-ng compare to VMware ESXi?, Moving to XCP-ng from VMware, Moving to XCP-ng from VMware ESXi, xen server, virtualization, xcp-ng xen orchestra, xen orchestra community edition, XCP-ng in the homelab, Comparing XCP-ng to ESXi, Life after Broadcom, xenserver, Moving from ESXi to XCP-ng, a VMware User's perspective on XCP-ng, Open source hypervisor, XOA

Id: cSwmtg7sJb4

Length: 22min 18sec (1338 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 03 2024