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Backup ecosystem

Xen Orchestra: the native backup solution​

The main backup solution for XCP-ng is Xen Orchestra: agentless, open source, and fully integrated with the platform. It is already included in every Vates VMS bundle, so if you run XCP-ng under subscription, you already own it; try it first. See the Xen Orchestra documentation for the complete list of backup modes and features.

Despite its specialized scope, the feature set is substantial: full, incremental and delta backups, replication, file-level restore, encryption, immutability for ransomware protection, and disaster recovery. Backups are stored on remotes: a local folder, NFS, SMB, or S3-compatible object storage. Xen Orchestra works with a wide range of S3-compatible providers (AWS S3, Wasabi, Backblaze B2, MinIO, Ceph, NetApp ONTAP…), classified in support tiers on the object storage support page. For ransomware protection, backups can also be made immutable, either natively on-premises or via S3 Object Lock.

A deliberately specialized scope​

Xen Orchestra backup is built for one platform: XCP-ng. That focus is a design choice, and it draws a clear line between what we do and what dedicated backup vendors do:

  • We work at the VM level. Xen Orchestra protects and restores virtual machines and their disks, agentlessly. It does not do application-aware backup: there is no dedicated Exchange protocol, no mailbox-level restore, no in-guest database agents.
  • We cover one platform. Xen Orchestra backs up XCP-ng and nothing else. Backup vendors cover many virtualization platforms at once, which matters in mixed environments.

So dedicated backup products are complementary to Vates VMS rather than in competition with it: they bring application-level granularity and multi-platform coverage that we deliberately do not build, and Xen Orchestra brings the tightest possible integration with XCP-ng. Many infrastructures run both: Xen Orchestra for VM-level protection of the XCP-ng estate, and a specialized product where application-aware restore or cross-platform coverage is required.

Third-party backup solutions​

Several third-party products are officially compatible with XCP-ng. For each vendor below, the agentless mention indicates whether the product backs up VMs through the platform API (agentless) or through software deployed inside the VMs or hosts.

Veeam​

XCP-ng is a fully supported hypervisor in Veeam Backup & Replication since version 13.1, with official agentless support developed in collaboration with Vates. After a public beta phase started in October 2025, the integration now aligns XCP-ng with Veeam's cross-platform protection standards:

  • Incremental backups using Changed Block Tracking (CBT), with backup health verification and threat scanning.
  • Guest-level file recovery and read-only disk mounting (Windows and Linux), without restoring the full VM.
  • Application-aware restores from SQL Server, Oracle, Exchange, SharePoint and Active Directory backups.
  • Cross-platform portability: restore workloads from any supported hypervisor, cloud platform or physical server to XCP-ng, restore XCP-ng backups to other platforms, and export backups to VHD, VHDX or VMDK.

See the Veeam v13.1 What's New for the full capability list. Running the Veeam agent inside VMs remains a valid approach on older Veeam versions.

Commvault​

Commvault is fully compatible with the XCP-ng API, enabling comprehensive backup capabilities from all Commvault features.

NAKIVO​

Another compatible solution with agents running in VMs.

note

We also started to discuss with NAKIVO to see if they could provide a native integration with XCP-ng.

Bacula​

Bacula offers an advanced module (or plugin) that provides native integration of Bacula with XCP-ng.

Storware Backup and Recovery​

It's agentless but closed source. However, it supports a large variety of virtualization platforms, including XCP-ng.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery​

Another solution, which isn't agentless (you need to deploy some code in each host). XCP-ng is supported.