XCP-ng: A turnkey open source virtualization platform

• What is XCP-ng?

  • Genesis
  • Key points

• Documentation

• Contribution & community

• Pro support

What is XCP-ng?

XCP-ng is a virtualization platform based on Xen Source and Citrix® Hypervisor (formerly XenServer). XCP-ng stands for Xen Cloud Platform - New Generation and is a tribute to the old Open Source project XCP, which was abandoned when XenServer was open-sourced in 2013.

Genesis

• 2003 : Xen project birth, first open source hypervisor
• 2007 : Xen Source Inc. acquired by Citrix, birth of XenServer (closed source)
• 2010 : Citrix strategy focused on virtual desktop (XenApp/XenDesktop) instead of server virtualization
• 2011 : XCP 1.0 (Xen Cloud Platform, Open Source XenServer)
• 2013 : XenServer becomes Open (end of XCP). Birth of Xen Orchestra
• 2017 (Dec) : Citrix changes their pricing strategy regarding XenServer and removes essential features from free XenServer versions. New features developed are (mostly) no longer open source
• 2018 (Jan) : XenServer forked, birth of XCP-ng
• 2019 (Jul): XCP-ng 8.0 is released

Key points

XCP-ng is a turnkey open source virtualization platform.

Platform

A combination of multiple components to deliver a cohesive solution

Compute + Network + Storage + API (Xen API) = XCP-ng

Open Source

XCP-ng is open source (mostly GPLv2), but also, all the components, documentation, repositories and dev process are publicly available and easily accessible.

Turnkey

• XCP-ng is intended to be easy to download and easy to install
• We are aiming to have the largest possible hardware compatibility
• XCP-ng embeds a complete API and comes with a friendly web-UI: Xen Orchestra

Documentation

We have extensive documentation for the XCP-ng project available here

Contribution and community

XCP-ng has a living community that you can join on our forum.

The project is open to contributions, bug reports and you can also host a mirror for XCP-ng

Pro support

For production environments and companies, we recommend obtaining pro support to cover your infrastructure. Pro support is delivered directly by the XCP-ng project dev team and pricing is per host, not per core!

Learn more about pro support for XCP-ng on the dedicated website.