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Xen Orchestra

Xen Orchestra (XO) is the comprehensive management solution for XCP-ng. It brings together infrastructure management, backups, monitoring, and complex automation, all in one centralized web interface.

Rather than managing several independent tools or scripts, XO provides administrators and IT teams everything they need to manage virtualized environments efficiently and securely.

1. Infrastructure management​

Manage all your hosts and pools from a single, unified console. Complex tasks—like rolling updates, maintenance operations, and live patching—become simple and efficient. Optimize CPU and memory allocation with ease, and use IP pools to simplify large-scale network management.

2. Virtual machine lifecycle​

Xen Orchestra simplifies every step of VM management: create, clone, import, or export workloads in just a few clicks. Migrate VMs across hosts, pools, or storage with minimal downtime, and rely on snapshots and restore points for added security. Need to switch from another platform? Import VMware workloads seamlessly for a smooth transition.

Detailed features​

  • VM creation, cloning, import/export
  • Power operations (start, stop, reboot, suspend, resume)
  • Migration (pool-to-pool, host-to-host, storage live migration)
  • Snapshots & restore
  • Import from VMware

3. Storage management​

Xen Orchestra puts you in full control of your storage: manage repositories and virtual disks easily, using the built-in tools. Attach or detach disks on the fly, migrate data between storage systems and monitor health and usage in real time, so you can always ensure peak performance and reliability.

4. Network management​

With XO, you gain full visibility and control over your VM networking. Configure physical and virtual interfaces (PIFs/VIFs), VLANs and bonding — all through an intuitive interface. No more need for complex command-line operations! Whether you need basic setups or advanced network topologies, everything is simple to implement and manage.

5. Backups and disaster recovery​

Xen Orchestra puts business continuity first. Schedule, replicate, or restore backups —down to individual files— while safeguarding critical metadata (including pool and configuration data). With Continuous Replication (CR) and Disaster Recovery plans, workloads can be rapidly restored when needed, reducing downtime and risk to a minimum.

Detailed features​

  • VM backups (snapshots, backups, replications)
  • Metadata backups (pool metadata, XO config)
  • File Level Restore
  • Backup reports
  • Continuous Replication (CR)
  • Disaster Recovery plans

6. Access control and security​

XO provides built-in security and delegation features. Manage users and groups with role-based permissions, and enable safe multi-tenancy via the self-service portal. Authentication integrates with GitHub, Google, LDAP, OpenID Connect, and SAML. Comprehensive audit logs record every action, while APIs—both REST and legacy JSON-RPC—make automation and integration seamless.

7. XOA and XO Config​

XOA is the easiest way to run Xen Orchestra: it's pre-configured, regularly updated, and fully maintained by Vates. It includes built-in licensing, telemetry, xoa-cli, xoa-updater, xo-server-xoa and cloud-based configuration backups. For advanced users, tools like xoa-builder and xoa-cli offer complete flexibility.

8. Monitoring and observability​

Xen Orchestra provides real-time metrics for CPU, RAM, disk, and network usage, all available out of the box. To ensure your systems stay healthy, you can rely on customizable alerts, interactive dashboards, and automated usage reports.

In addition, you can extend monitoring capabilities across your entire IT environment thanks to seamless integrations with Netdata, Netbox, and webhooks. Finally, with detailed activity logs, task histories, and scheduled jobs, you always have full visibility and control over your infrastructure.

9. Advanced features​

Xen Orchestra doesn’t just stop at basic virtualization management. It also includes powerful features to enhance your workflow:

  • Cloud-init support for fast, automated VM provisioning
  • Metadata and tagging to organize and categorize resources efficiently
  • Resource delegation for secure, controlled sharing across teams
  • A plugin system that lets you extend functionality, including load balancing
  • Pre-built templates and recipes from the XO Hub to deploy services in minutes
  • XO Proxy for seamless management in distributed environments
  • XOSTOR for your hyperconvergence needs

10. Partnerships​

Xen Orchestra works hand in hand with partner technologies like EasyVirt DCScope to deliver smart capacity planning and optimization.

New integrations —including UDS— will be added soon, giving you even more ways to connect and streamline your infrastructure.