XCP-ng/XenServer Hypervisor NIC Static MAC Configuration Guide to Prevent NIC Ordering/Numbering Changes When Moving Slots Or Changing NICs (Also Corrects Issues With Intel Mezzanine NIC Port Numberings)

coolelectricity

Xen/XCP-ng Hypervisor Network Interface Controller Solution to Set Static MAC Assignments to Prevent Out-of-Order / Re-ordering of NIC Numbering Problem Description XCP-ng can sometimes skip NIC numbers (e.g., having eth0-4, then eth6-7, missing eth5) or renumber NICs after hardware changes, …

Read More

XCP-ng / XenServer Headless No-host GPU Only GPU Pass-through To VM Guest (Single GPU Systems, or APU as GPU Pass-through) Safety Setup For Easy Emergency Mitigation Situations

coolelectricity

So, you have an XCP-ng host machine with only 1 GPU, and you want to use that GPU to pass-through to a guest VM, leaving your XCP-ng host TRULY headless? Yup. You can do that. We will cover “the easy …

Read More

Installing Mellanox Connectx-3 / Connectx-3 Pro 56Gb/40Gbe NICs in XCP-ng 8.3 LTS With VDI Firmware defaulting to Infiniband (ib) When You Want Ethernet (en) Instead (But Still Keeping the Infiniband Option Open!)

coolelectricity

How’s that for a title? Oddly Specific, yet IYKYK. Sometimes, all goes perfectly smooth with XCP-ng and the Connectx-3 NICs. Other times… not so much. This is for the “not to much” times. Complete Guide: Configuring Mellanox ConnectX-3 NICs in …

Read More

XCP-ng grub.cfg Fix for Hanging Without Boot Countdown Timeout on Janky UEFI/BIOS or Motherboard with ACPI Issues (Or: How to Force Boot XCP-ng / CentOS / RHEL Linux “No Matter What)

coolelectricity

Sometimes a BIOS update (UEFI, nowadays, but you get the idea) might cause strange power and/or boot issues with specific motherboards. While fixing a “freebie system” recently, we saw a UEFI that was struggling with “staying off”. There seems to …

Read More