XCP-ng is a server virtualization platform built around the Xen hypervisor. Originally derived from XenServer, it provides a complete environment for running virtual machines, managing physical hosts and consolidating workloads onto shared infrastructure.
The platform combines a bare-metal hypervisor with management services, virtual networking and storage facilities. Administrators can group servers into resource pools, allocate virtual machines to available hosts and migrate workloads between systems. Support for shared storage makes it suitable for infrastructure requiring workload mobility and resilience.
XCP-ng includes XO Lite, a lightweight browser-based management interface embedded directly in the host. It provides convenient access to basic virtualization management without requiring a separate management server. More advanced administration is available through Xen Orchestra, a closely related project maintained by the same development team.
Xen Orchestra extends XCP-ng with centralised management, backup scheduling, disaster recovery, reporting and automation. This combination makes the platform suitable for businesses, hosting providers, private cloud deployments and home laboratories that require an alternative to proprietary virtualization systems.
This is free and open source software.
Key Features
- Xen-based virtualization for running multiple operating systems as isolated guests.
- Manage hosts, virtual machines and shared resources through the XAPI management stack.
- Group multiple physical hosts into resource pools.
- Live migration of running virtual machines between compatible hosts.
- Storage migration to move virtual disks between storage repositories.
- Support local, shared and network-based storage repositories.
- Dynamic memory management for supported virtual machines.
- High-availability functionality for resource pools.
- Support VM snapshots, cloning and templates.
- Virtual networking with VLANs and bonded network interfaces.
- Support PCI, GPU, USB and SR-IOV passthrough where supported by hardware.
- Embedded XO Lite web interface for local host and pool management.
- Xen Orchestra integration for centralised administration of multiple hosts and pools.
- Backup, delta backup, replication and disaster recovery through Xen Orchestra.
- Monitoring, reporting and resource management through Xen Orchestra.
- Role-based access controls and self-service management through Xen Orchestra.
- Command-line management using the xe utility.
- REST API-based management and infrastructure automation through Xen Orchestra.
Website: xcp-ng.org
Support:
Developer: Vates and the XCP-ng community
License: GNU General Public License v2.0
XCP-ng is written in Python. Learn Python with our recommended free books and free tutorials.
Related Software
| Hypervisors | |
|---|---|
| Proxmox | Virtualization management platform |
| Xen Hypervisor | Fastest and most secure infrastructure virtualization solution |
| KVM | Full virtualization solution for x86 hardware |
| oVirt | Virtualization solution for your entire enterprise |
| Firecracker | Create and run lightweight microVMs |
| XCP-ng | High performance enterprise level virtualization platform |
| Lguest | Little hypervisor designed for experimentation with virtualization |
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