Daily Post September 26 2025
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XCP-ng
Stands for Xen Cloud Platform - next generation, is an open source virtualization platform built on Linux and the Xen Hypervisor technology. It provides an enterprise-class virtualization environment designed for running a wide variety of workloads on bare-metal hardware. The project originated as a successor to XCP, itself derived from the open source version of Citrix XenServer. XCP-ng was launched in 2018 to provide a fully community-supported, no-cost alternative to proprietary virtualization solutions, notably after Citrix made XenServer less accessible to free users and ceased accepting community contributions. Today, XCP-ng benefits from active development, a good feature set, and integration in a growing ecosystem centered on open source tools such as Xen Orchestra for management and backups. It is recognized for its strong security, scalability, and performance, making it suitable for both home lab enthusiasts and production data centers.
Licensing
The software is released under free software licenses, primarily GPL version 2, which ensures that users have the freedom to run, study, modify, and distribute the software. XCP-ng incorporates a collection of components, including the Linux kernel (licensed under GPLv2) and the Xen hypervisor components that may be under GPLv2, LGPLv2+, or BSD licenses depending on the specific parts. This combination preserves transparency and community participation while fostering collaboration. All features of XCP-ng are provided with no licensing fees or locked functionalities. While commercial support subscriptions and professional services are available from companies like Vates to assist production environments, the core platform remains free and open for anyone to use and extend.
Features
A turnkey virtualization platform that enables users to run multiple virtual machines (VMs) efficiently across physical host servers. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems such as Linux, Windows, and BSD, making it a good choice for many use cases. The platform leverages the Xen hypervisor, noted for its security-focused architecture, which isolates virtual environments and manages hardware access securely through a privileged domain (Dom0). XCP-ng includes enterprise-grade features like live migration, high availability clustering, snapshots, and storage and network management. These capabilities allow for minimizing downtime, efficient resource utilization, and VM lifecycle management.
By design, its goal is to be accessible without deep Linux or hypervisor expertise, providing management interfaces through the Xen Orchestra platform. Xen Orchestra, also open source, offers a web-based graphical interface to administer hosts, automate tasks, monitor resource consumption, and handle backups. For users preferring command line or API access, XCP-ng integrates with standard tools and supports automation frameworks such as Ansible, Terraform, and Packer. The platform scales well for environments ranging from a single host to large clusters with high resource densities, supporting features like cross-cluster resource migration and hardware acceleration technologies (Intel VT-x, AMD-V).
Historical Context and Community
It emerged in response to limitations imposed by Citrix on its XenServer product. Over time, Citrix reduced the features available in the free editions of XenServer, removed public build instructions, and limited community contributions. To preserve an open virtualization platform, Olivier Lambert, founder of Xen Orchestra, spearheaded the revival of the XCP project, resulting in XCP-ng’s launch in 2018. The project quickly gained momentum and funding, including a successful Kickstarter campaign, reflecting strong community demand for a free and fully open virtual infrastructure solution.
Today, XCP-ng is an open source project with a growing community of users, contributors, and commercial supporters. It is part of the Linux Foundation’s Xen Project, which helps ensure ongoing development and collaboration. Documentation, support forums, and community events foster knowledge sharing and encourage user participation. This community-driven approach enables continuous improvements, security improvements, and feature enhancements that keep XCP-ng competitive with commercial hypervisors.
Comparison to Other Virtualization Platforms
XCP-ng shares roots with Citrix XenServer, it has evolved its own identity focused on transparency, open collaboration, and cost-effectiveness. Unlike commercial hypervisors such as VMware ESXi or the newer paid versions of Citrix XenServer, XCP-ng offers all features without paywalls or restrictive licenses. It is suitable for organizations and individuals who want to avoid vendor lock-in and gain full control over their virtualization stack.
Compared to alternatives like Proxmox or VMware, XCP-ng may have a steeper learning curve for newcomers but provides enterprise capabilities once mastered. It lacks some native container orchestration features but supports integration with Kubernetes and has solid support for common DevOps tools. The availability of Xen Orchestra enhances usability and provides essential management and backup functions missing from bare hypervisor installs.
As you know I am a huge incus fan but still XCP-ng is worth exploring: https://xcp-ng.org/