I passed through a USB sound device via the XCP-ng UI on version 8.3. Went fairly well but sounded a bit scratchy when I used the device in VM in my Broadcasting application Sam Broadcaster. I’ll try using it again but so far having to go with my silent output for my sound pipeline in the SAM application.
This is how it looked in the CLI before and after
~]# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0624:0249 Avocent Corp. Virtual Keyboard/Mouse
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0624:0248 Avocent Corp. Virtual Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
[22:15 ~]# lsusb
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 007: ID 0624:0249 Avocent Corp. Virtual Keyboard/Mouse
Bus 001 Device 006: ID 0624:0248 Avocent Corp. Virtual Hub
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 041e:3042 Creative Technology, Ltd
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
[22:31 ~]# xe pusb-list
uuid ( RO) : 009f7ec1-d49b-11da-8f34-1de8d6128031
path ( RO): 1-2
vendor-id ( RO): 041e
vendor-desc ( RO): Creative Technology, Ltd
product-id ( RO): 3042
product-desc ( RO):
serial ( RO): <blank>
version ( RO): 1.10
description ( RO): Creative Technology, Ltd_<blank>
speed ( RO): 12.000
Sound Blaster audio USB passed through to XCP-ng host. Sound Blaster audio USB passed through to XCP-ng host. W2025 Data Center VM
July 23, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Both XCP-ng 8.3 Servers in Rack
Doesn’t look pretty but I now have both!of the XCP-ng servers I built, fine tuned and stress tested in my rack. I’ll post specs later. Now my C7000 is retired I just have to clean it up and find it a new home!
I had to enlarge one hole in one of my rails attached to my 4U server case and move my rails down an inch. Physically besides connecting the networking that was the only hiccup. Now my hallway is empty and its time for cleanup. This will now give me back my work space for testing and building new equipment.
The servers are still a bit noisy as I went with the high end 8k rpm fans even though I have active heat sinks with fans. I’ll explore more liquid cooling but its a lot more work with server class CPUs. A bit more work than I set out to do with all of the updates but saves me time and gives my weekends more time for other things I’m hoping. Would have completed this earlier this week but I was really ill, still feel something and have to visit the doctor tomorrow so will see.
I officially removed my Bl460 HP Gen 8 Blades from being XCP-ng servers in my pool as well. They did a great job but I can already tell these new servers are much faster!
Made sure my Xcp-ng were at the latest patch revisions for XCP-ng 8.3 plus updated my community XO version via git. Then updated my web server, music relay server for IceCast and ShoutCast and music server. Had to swap my VMs between virtual servers as some patches required a reboot. Reminded me why I wanted more memory before this AI trend of gobbling up the computer chips.
I obviously need do cable management, I will rack my switches in a new manner plus a host of other things like a custom built open source router rebuild. I needed to reboot my router I was using for NAT forwarding.
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on One XCP-ng Virtualization Server in Rack
One of my custom built XCP-ng virtualization servers is finally in my rack, connected and working. I will soon have my hallway space mostly back which is where they have been running serving up my virtual environment for the past few months. The primary issue has been locating racks, rails and hardware and piecing them together.
I also had to go pickup a mounting bracket for my 2.5” boot drive to mount into my 5.25” bay. I was going to use ssd’s and had purchased hot swap bays for the boot drives but one of my ssd’s died so I went with mechanical 2.5” drives I had lying around that used to be inside C7000 blade servers. They will not get hammered since they are just the boot drives.
I ended up using a really old rack and rail system to rack my systems. I have had these rack and rails for well over 25 plus years now and cannot recall where I got them. They are plain straight forward and unlike any I have ever seen in the enterprise world but they work well for me with 2u and up rack mount cases. I am using 4u cases in this iteration of virtualization servers.
Not all the holes lined up and I ended up doing something I was hoping I wouldn’t have to do again which is drilling additional holes in the rail portion that connects to the case. This wasn’t bad considering in the past I have had to drill in cases to put things like support studs for motherboards and bolts and screws to act like rivets to connect rail kits. I have even did some specialized work for airflow baffles in the past.
Anyway I have the template needed for the other case to get racked and will hopefully get to do that tomorrow after moving all the VMs to the system in the rack currently. I need to make the system in the rack the master server in XCP-ng before moving the VMs over.
XCP-ng virtualization server customer built in rack. Not pretty but the specs for this are pretty impressive. The outer case is for function and air flow.These are the rack and rails am using.Inside of one of my XCP-ng servers which are duplicates of each other
July 18, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Updated my CMS WordPress
I updated my W2025 Data Center music server and IceCast and ShoutCast music relay servers. I had already setup some upbeat music and then I’ll wind down to something a bit mellower and then let the algorithm take over with my database about 4am PST.
July 16, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Put UPS Equipment Back In Rack
The UPS equipment (Leibert UPStation GTXs) is back in the rack tonight. I placed each UPS battery cluster on separate racks this time so that battery replacement is easier for the extra battery pack on top of the main assembly.
Finding my racking hardware screws, bolts etc has been most of my time. I found the rails I will use for the virtualization servers as well but will not rack those tonight.
Front viewSide view of racking shelves and UPS equipment.Back side view of UPS equipment.
July 12, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Moved C7000 Blade Server From Rack
After performing a successful clone using Clonezilla of my physical BL460 Gen7 blade that was my W2019 Data Center server with Sam Broadcaster that served as my music server, it was time to move my C7000 blade chassis out of my rack and power it down. I’ll have more on my P2V clone to XCP-ng as a VM in another post I already have drafted.
I am already up on my new XCP-ng virtualization servers and have been on it for a while now. They are hanging out in my hallway and need to come into the rack. There was no space for the new servers in the rack with the C7000 chassis and my UPS equipment.
The UPS equipment was sitting right on top of my C7000 chassis as its sole support. The UPS are also plugged into my 2 NAS (TrueNAS custom) systems, plus I wanted to make sure that I had my cabling connected properly if I needed to power my C7000 blade server for anything again after moving out of the rack.
With the C700 powered down, I started with my top UPS cluster and moved the connections to the other UPS clusters. Then moved the UPS to a furniture dolly to the side of the rack, moved the power connections back to the UPS cluster on the furniture dolly. I repeated this with my next two UPS clusters, stacking them on top of each other. Since my NAS systems are dual homed with power, they had no issues along with my switches. My consumer level routers did end up going down however (I plan on replacing the consumer routers with OpenSense custom build soon). I had to reboot my router on my main domain but besides that everything was smooth.
Next, how to move the C7000 out of the rack and be able to properly connect it back. As you can see, my wire management is not good. What I decided to do was not disconnect the networking cables from the C7000. I traced the networking cables back to their respective switches, disconnected them at the switches, ran them through the back of the rack on top of the C7000 chassis, back to the switches via the front of the rack so that when I pull the chassis out the cables are coming through the rack front with the chassis connected to the switches which are in front of the rack. This way I was able to keep the cables connected where they were in the chassis back to the proper switch. It was easier to determine which switch the cable went to than which module\port in the back of the chassis.
Then as you can see below, I pulled the C7000 chassis out after disconnecting the power on to another furniture dolly I had and placed it on the other side of the rack. I can now power the C7000 chassis and blades up if I need to for any reason with the proper networking. The power consumption and heat even with the C7000 blade system just idling while plugged in and all the blades down is a bit of a load. My UPS equipment is barely registering anything with the C7000 chassis not plugged into power!
Next steps will be placing my UPS equipment at the bottom of the rack and then placing my newly built XCP-ng hypervisor servers into the racks, then properly attach all my networking equipment within the rack. I will do better with cable management as well.
I have to say the physical part of vacating the C7000 went smoother than I thought it would with my plan to systematically move the UPS clusters one at a time. Routing the networking cables through the back of the rack keeping them plugged into the chassis was the big key.
How it was before moving C7000.UPS moved out with systems still up.Back of C7000.C7000 partially out of the rack onto the furniture dolly.C7000 and UPS equipment out of the rack finally.C7000 and UPS equipment out of the rack finally, another view.
July 5, 2026
by dhoytt Comments Off on Impromptu Maintenance Now Some Old School Hip Hop
Wasn’t planning on doing much today on the system but saw some issues and had to clear the routers and then decided to update the OS of all of my servers that touched the music server including my web server.
Updated my new W2025 Data Center virus definitions as that was all it needed, updated my Fedora Linux 44 music relay servers that stream IceCast and ShoutCast. Updated my Rocky Linux 9 web server, then updated Word Press to 7.0 along with all of the plugins and themes. Heck I even updated my Linux workstation that’s currently running Fedora 44.
Noticed my updates are very fast on my new virtualization servers I built. Makes the maintenance time so much better!
Now I decided to just line up some Sunday tunes since I was on the sytems and still monitoring performance on my new music server that is newly virtualized, I believe I need to pass through USB audio through XCP-ng to that VM, stay tuned for that.
Going to have some old school legends maybe with a few current artists mixed in. Look for artists like Sparky D, Ja Rule, Yo-Yo, Cypress Hill, Twilight 22, Kurtis Blow, Ice-T etc.
