XCP-NG Backup Health Check on Windows VMs

Question on whats the best way to do this. I know the “Health Check” option is new on backup schedules for XCP-NG. I have about 6 VMs in my environment and 2 of them are windows. when i run my delta backup for alls vms i have health check checked. all my Linux VMs come back successful but the two windows ones come back failed. The error i get is

I do have the “Manage Citrix PV Drivers via windows update” checked and installed via windows updates. I’m not sure if this is different than what is needed on the Health Check. I did go to the dashboard->Health and it says the management agent isn’t detected and I’m assuming that’s what it’s looking for.

Would love a step in the right direction for this

You have to install the actual agent on there weather it be the Citrix agent or the one from xcpng. I personally use the Citrix one and you can run this script as admin in powershell ISE.

Where is the XCP management agent for Windows? I went looking last week and couldn’t really nail down the latest version to give it another try. I have a fresh Win10 eval machine I set up in my lab that I want to get connected properly. Not only does the lack of the agent mess up the backups, but it will mess up rolling updates when the XCP hosts need an update. The system can’t shut the VM down properly, and it often has trouble moving them without the agent installed. At least this happens on my systems.

Word of warning, do not install both the Citrix and XCP from update drivers, they will conflict!

I tried running your script, and it gave me the Citrix 7.x.x version, not the latest 9.3.x. This was on a machine that had the Citrix 9.2.x already installed. I haven’t had time to look into why it did this, and to be truthful, I forgot where I even got the script. But now I remember and I’ll have to put more effort into this so we can discuss it in a different thread.

Found the XCP-NG agent through a link in the user guide… It works but not as well as the Citrix agent. Disk access is slower by a lot, not sure on network.

Also when I went to uninstall the drivers to test with the Citrix drivers, the VM no longer booted. Thankfully this was in my lab on an eval Win10 so I just deleted it and I’ll fool with this a little later while I work out something for my production network.

yeah i ended up installing the XCP-NG tools on a test windows VM. backup was successful. looks like there are a few more things that get installed versus the citric ones from the windows update. I tried to go down the rabbit hole on uninstalling the citrix drivers but nothing worked. i am migrating everything over from hyper v so I just pulled my backup again. only did the XCP-NG ones so looks like that is working now. Releases · xcp-ng/win-pv-drivers · GitHub

Not to mention those drivers are beta and they were last updated in 2019. Which is why I went with the citrix agent.

I’m afraid they need more people working on the XCP-NG Windows drivers and agent, the last word was that there is only one person working on them, and probably limited time to work on them. Beyond my skill and knowledge.

They do work, but the responsiveness of the VM with those drivers is very different from the Citrix drivers (at least the 9.x Citrix drivers). Just a pain to log in to get the drivers each time they (Citrix) update, and at least the Citrix are signed. It would also be nice if Citrix would package them as an ISO, would save a step to getting them into the system.

So would i assume the best way to go about this is using the citrix drivers and getting them direct from citrix not the windows update checkbox?

Citrix isn’t in the business of handing out software without a price. Weather it be your personal information or by paywall. I mean, look at the lengths we have to go through to get the agent as it sits right now.

The Windows update checkbox has never given me the management agent, the only things it seems to give are disk and network drivers, maybe graphics drivers.

For now, the best that I use are the Citrix drivers. You need to make a free account and then you can download these drivers. Updates to Citrix VM Tools for Windows - For XenServer and Citrix Hypervisor

If there is a better way, I’d really like to know. The script that Maximus created is a good start, but it pulls the 7.2 version which is very old. I’ve had mixed luck with Microsoft fetching the updated versions when changes happen.

I used a CD burning tool to create an ISO from the downloaded ZIP, and then add this into my ISO store so it is easy to mount on the Windows VM.

Also note this only applies to a Windows VM, the Linux tools provided with XCP-NG seem to work fine with the included ISO.

Maybe I am blind, but I am not seeing any way to make a free account. Its only asking if your company is already a partner or company already has a citrix account.

You are right! Looks like the changed it. Surprised I haven’t been purged yet. I’ll look around and see what I can find for a method to do this. I did just log in and so far I’m still there, hopefully they are big enough that I fall through the cracks.

I may have used this page and entered personal or none or 3 letters in the company field, but that was a while ago. I did use a personal email address. Request Account - Citrix

There still is a free version of the Citrix Xen Hypervisor that you can download, then you can extract the management agent from this older version, but that’s a hassle. And it will still be an old version, maybe as old as the script is calling.

I think what we need is an XCP management agent that works alongside the microsoft update drivers that we can install with the checkbox. Might be worth trying when I get a chance to build another test machine. The proper drivers really do make a difference.

I guess I forgot how hard it was to find this junk back when I was starting down this road.