XenServer/XCP-ng Hosting Options

Here's what the XenServer/XCP-ng related hosting options looks like, with the default values or [required] for property values that must be specified:

hosting:
  environment:         xenserver
  hypervisor:
    snapshot:          false
    storageRepository: "local storage"

Property Description

Property	Description
snapshot	`bool:` Optionally directs XenServer to create the virtual machines using a snapshot of the virtual machine template rather than creating a full copy. This defaults to false. Virtual machines created via a snapshot will be ready within seconds where as creation can take something like 4 minutes on a SSD or 9 minutes on a spinning drive. We don't enable snapshots though by default, because some web posts from around 2014 indicate that operators may encounter problems when something like multiple virtual machines have been created as snapshots from the same template. We figure that it's best to default to safe setting for production clusters and then allow operators to override this when provisioning temporary test clusters or when provisioning on a storage repository that doesn't have these limitations. For snapshots to work, the storage repository must support them and the virtual machine template must reside in the same repository where the virtual machines are being created. The current neon-cli implementation persists the cluster VM templates to the local storage repository, so support for non-local storage repositories is not supported out-of-the-box at this time.
storageRepository	`string:` Specifies the XenServer storage repository to be used to store the XenServer node template as well as the cluster virtual machine images. This defaults to Local storage.

snapshot

bool: Optionally directs XenServer to create the virtual machines using a snapshot of the virtual machine template rather than creating a full copy. This defaults to false.

Virtual machines created via a snapshot will be ready within seconds where as creation can take something like 4 minutes on a SSD or 9 minutes on a spinning drive. We don't enable snapshots though by default, because some web posts from around 2014 indicate that operators may encounter problems when something like multiple virtual machines have been created as snapshots from the same template.

We figure that it's best to default to safe setting for production clusters and then allow operators to override this when provisioning temporary test clusters or when provisioning on a storage repository that doesn't have these limitations.

For snapshots to work, the storage repository must support them and the virtual machine template must reside in the same repository where the virtual machines are being created. The current neon-cli implementation persists the cluster VM templates to the local storage repository, so support for non-local storage repositories is not supported out-of-the-box at this time.

storageRepository

string: Specifies the XenServer storage repository to be used to store the XenServer node template as well as the cluster virtual machine images. This defaults to Local storage.