There has to be a better way
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I need to be able to get a USB drives contents to a VM, while the VM is offline. I personally would say rather than trying to customize XS, we just build a new exchange Vm and migrate the federation services over.
Modifying the xe boot perimeters to pass the pci USB to all guest is insane.
Anyone have any usable input?
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You can mount the offlined VM's drives into a different VM. That way you can modify them while the original VM is offlined.
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@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
You can mount the offlined VM's drives into a different VM. That way you can modify them while the original VM is offlined.
How would I do this?
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@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
You can mount the offlined VM's drives into a different VM. That way you can modify them while the original VM is offlined.
How would I do this?
You need to attach the virtual disk in the "console" (XenOrchestra or XenCenter) to the VM that you want to work from. The original VM has to be offline first (or you will force a situation like connecting one LUN to two servers at once and BOOM.)
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Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
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@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
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Ok let me see if that works, thanks.
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Just creating a VM to test with and will update shortly.
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@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Just creating a VM to test with and will update shortly.
Okay
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@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
At least in 99% of all cases
But yes, what Scott told you should work out of the box. You just need another VM or something else that can read the filesystem. Depending on the disk image format, you could also use a loop-mount for example.
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Would be useful to have xs drivers installed to the test system..
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@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Would be useful to have xs drivers installed to the test system..
Probably a good idea.
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Yep, that should work and I don't have to fuss with trying to pass USB through the host to a VM.
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It's really just like pulling the hard drive out of one desktop and plugging it into another.
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@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
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@Dashrender said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
You can do the same in XenServer. At least with Windows as the guest. I haven't tried it with Linux.
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@coliver said in There has to be a better way:
@Dashrender said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
You can do the same in XenServer. At least with Windows as the guest. I haven't tried it with Linux.
You can't however do this if the source drive is running on a separate VM. (That VM must be powered off).
Which is what I did in order to do this.
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@coliver said in There has to be a better way:
@Dashrender said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
You can do the same in XenServer. At least with Windows as the guest. I haven't tried it with Linux.
Linux can do that, just needs a SCSI Scan run.
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@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
@coliver said in There has to be a better way:
@Dashrender said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
You can do the same in XenServer. At least with Windows as the guest. I haven't tried it with Linux.
You can't however do this if the source drive is running on a separate VM. (That VM must be powered off).
Which is what I did in order to do this.
Right, unless you unmount the source drive first. I don't even think VMWare can reliably do this.
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@coliver said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
@coliver said in There has to be a better way:
@Dashrender said in There has to be a better way:
@scottalanmiller said in There has to be a better way:
@DustinB3403 said in There has to be a better way:
Does the VM I want to work from need to be offline?
When attaching the disk? yes.
why? You can add new disks to VMWare while a VM is running without any issues. I'm pretty sure you can attach a pre-existing partition as well.
You can do the same in XenServer. At least with Windows as the guest. I haven't tried it with Linux.
You can't however do this if the source drive is running on a separate VM. (That VM must be powered off).
Which is what I did in order to do this.
Right, unless you unmount the source drive first. I don't even think VMWare can reliably do this.
VMware can do it reliably on its side, but it would still hose the data inside the drive.
