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XCP-ng
An Open Source virtualization platform, based around Xen hypervisor

XCP-ng is a Linux distribution of the Xen Project, with pre-configured Xen Hypervisor and the Xen API project (XAPI) working out-of-the-box. The project was born in 2018, following the fork of Citrix XenServer (which became "Citrix Hypervisor" and now "XenServer" again). Since January 2020, it is also part of the Linux Foundation, via the Xen Project.

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Name

XCP-ng stands for Xen Cloud Platform - next generation. It is the successor to XCP, initially created as an Open Source version of Citrix XenServer in 2010. At that time XenServer was closed source, with XCP being the open source version containing a subset of features.

As XenServer was open sourced in 2013,5 the XCP project was halted. Several years later when Citrix stopped delivering XenServer for free and via open source, the project was revived as XCP-ng.

History

In December 2017, Citrix announced that they would remove important features of XenServer Free edition and make them only available on paid tiers.6 Also, XenServer wasn't focused toward community because:

  • no public build instructions were available7
  • since XenServer 7.4, it was even impossible to start a virtual machine because of some proprietary components8
  • community feedback was not taken into account91011
  • no external contributions were accepted or even possible (due to the lack of publicly accessible code repository for various components)12

In response, the original founder of Xen Orchestra13 (an Open Source web management platform for XenServer), Olivier Lambert, announced that he would revive the XCP project, with its original goals: providing a Free/libre and 100% community backed version of XenServer.14151617

Soon after, a Kickstarter campaign was started18 and quickly exceeded the original milestone.1920

On March 31, 2018, XCP-ng was announced as the first official release.21 After five other releases (see the releases section) and few months in beta,22 the first Long Term Support (LTS) version was announced in November 2020.23

Components

XCP-ng can be compared to a Linux distribution,24 but meant to run Xen out-of-the-box. It is a collection of components creating a coherent system that you can install on any x86 bare-metal server. It is based on multiple projects, like CentOS for user space packages, XAPI project for the API, Xen project for the hypervisor, Open vSwitch for the networking and so on. XCP-ng provides also extra packages that aren't available elsewhere, because non-existent or closed-sources in Citrix Hypervisor.

As a fork of XenServer with an "upstream first" philosophy,25 XCP-ng stays pretty close to the original Citrix project, and can be considered as a "friendly fork".26

Releases

XCP-ng versionHypervisor versionRelease dateSupport until
Old version, not maintained: 7.4Xen 4.7.52018-03-312018-10-31
Old version, not maintained: 7.5Xen 4.7.52018-08-102019-07-25
Old version, not maintained: 7.6Xen 4.7.62018-10-312020-03-30
Old version, not maintained: 8.0Xen 4.11.12019-07-252020-11-13
Old version, not maintained: 8.1Xen 4.13.02020-03-312021-03-31
Old version, not maintained: 8.2 LTSXen 4.13.12020-11-182025-06-25
Latest version: 8.3Xen 4.17.42024-10-072028-11-30

XCP-ng 8.2 (LTS)

XCP-ng versionRelease date
Old version, not maintained: 8.2.0 LTS2020-11-1827
Latest version: 8.2.1 LTS2022-02-2828

See also

Notes

References

  1. Xen Project (April 1, 2019). "What is XCP-ng?". Xen Project. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xenproject.org/developers/teams/xcp-ng/ ↩

  2. Xen Project (January 28, 2020). "XCP-ng joins the Xen project as an incubation project". Xen Project. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xenproject.org/2020/01/28/xcp-ng-joins-the-xen-project-as-an-incubation-project/ ↩

  3. Michael Larabel (January 28, 2020). "XCP-ng 8.1 Beta Rolls Out While Becoming Part Of The Xen Project". Phoronix. Retrieved January 1, 2022. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XCP-ng-8.1-Beta-Xen/ ↩

  4. "La plate‑forme de virtualisation XCP‑ng rejoint le projet Xen dans la Fondation Linux" (in French). LinuxFR. January 30, 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2022. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XCP-ng-8.1-Beta-Xen/ ↩

  5. Citrix (July 15, 2013). "XenServer 6.2 is now fully open source!". Citrix. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2013/06/25/xenserver-6-2-is-now-fully-open-source/ ↩

  6. Andy Melmed (December 12, 2019). "XenServer 7.3: Changes to the Free Edition". Citrix. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2017/12/12/xenserver-7-3-changes-to-the-free-edition/ ↩

  7. No instructions available on official Citrix documentation nor on the legacy XenServer community website. https://docs.citrix.com/en-us/citrix-hypervisor.html ↩

  8. Olivier Lambert (July 31, 2018). "Basic VM operations broken without emu-manager". Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-878 ↩

  9. Adam Kamali (April 14, 2016). "Support for 4K block sector size disks". Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-507 ↩

  10. Simon Rowe (May 29, 2016). "Install on Linux Software Raid fails". Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-545 ↩

  11. Mark Syms (May 29, 2016). "Make sm works with IPv6". GitHub. Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://github.com/xapi-project/sm/issues/527#issuecomment-734740833 ↩

  12. Samuel Verschelde (August 29, 2019). "Where to find latest source and git commit history for xsconsole?". Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://bugs.xenserver.org/browse/XSO-961 ↩

  13. "Xen Orchestra". Xen Orchestra. Retrieved March 10, 2022. https://xen-orchestra.com ↩

  14. "Introducing XCP-ng". Xen Orchestra website. December 29, 2017. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xen-orchestra.com/blog/introducing-xcp-ng ↩

  15. Simon Sharwood (January 16, 2018). "Developer plots server virtualization comeback for XenServer". The Register. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://www.theregister.com/2018/01/16/xenserver_open_source_fork_xcp_ng/ ↩

  16. "XCP-ng une alternative open source à XenServer" (in French). LinuxFR. January 10, 2018. Retrieved January 1, 2022. https://linuxfr.org/news/xcp-ng-une-alternative-open-source-a-xenserver ↩

  17. "Der Xen-Hypervisor XCP-ng" (in German). Linux Magazin. March 2020. Retrieved January 1, 2022. https://www.linux-magazin.de/ausgaben/2020/03/xcp-ng/ ↩

  18. "XCP-ng is on Kickstarter!". XCP-ng.org. January 31, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2018/01/31/xcp-ng-is-on-kickstarter/ ↩

  19. "XCP-ng successful Kickstarter campaign". XCP-ng.org. March 5, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2018/03/05/xcp-ng-successful-kickstarter-campaign/ ↩

  20. Simon Sharwood (March 6, 2018). "Open source XenServer project is go after crushing crowdcash call". The Register. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://www.theregister.com/2018/03/06/xcp_ng_crowdfunding_for_open_source_xen_server_succeeds/ ↩

  21. "First XCP-ng release". XCP-ng.org. March 31, 2018. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2018/03/31/first-xcp-ng-release/ ↩

  22. "XCP-ng 8.2 LTS To Bring Rewritten UEFI, Core Scheduling To Fend Off Side Channel Attacks". Phoronix. October 18, 2020. Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=XCP-ng-8.2-LTS-Beta. ↩

  23. "XCP-ng 8.2 - LTS". XCP-ng.org. November 18, 2020. Retrieved December 8, 2021. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2020/11/18/xcp-ng-8-2-lts/ ↩

  24. "Other Operating Systems and Related Hypervisors". Distrowatch. Retrieved December 9, 2021. https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=links ↩

  25. "We are downstream". XCP-ng Documentation. Retrieved December 13, 2021. https://xcp-ng.org/docs/develprocess.html#tags-maintenance-branches-in-our-code-repositories ↩

  26. "XCP-ng: building an Open Source and turnkey virtualization platform". FOSDEM. Retrieved January 1, 2022. https://archive.fosdem.org/2019/schedule/event/vai_xcp_ng_building_an_open_source_and_turnkey_virtualization_platform/ ↩

  27. "XCP-ng 8.2 - LTS". XCP-ng. 18 November 2020. Retrieved 10 March 2022. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2020/11/18/xcp-ng-8-2-lts/ ↩

  28. "XCP-ng 8.2.1 update for 8.2 LTS". XCP-ng. 28 February 2022. Retrieved 10 March 2022. https://xcp-ng.org/blog/2022/02/28/xcp-ng-8-2-1-update/ ↩