XCP-ng HomeLab Edition
A free, community-built XCP-ng ISO that replaces the official Xen Orchestra (Aka XOA) with a fully self-hosted Xen Orchestra. The goal is to ease the deployment of community-built XOA images, essentially targeting home-labbers.
⚠️ Alpha software
XCP-ng HomeLab Edition is in alpha. It is under active development and has not been through a stabilisation cycle. Expect breaking changes at every release: component versions, package names, repository layout and update behaviour can all change, and an in-place update may require manual intervention on the host.
Run it on hardware and data you are prepared to rebuild from scratch. Bug reports and feedback are welcome on GitHub.
Download latest ISO View on GitHub
What is XCP-ng HomeLab Edition?
XCP-ng is a powerful, open-source Type-1 hypervisor based on the Xen Project. Officially it ships with XO Lite, a lightweight in-browser management UI, and a one-click button that deploys the official Xen Orchestra Appliance (XOA).
XCP-ng HL keeps everything that makes XCP-ng great while replacing that single button with a community-maintained workflow. Once deployed you will be able to choose between 3 options to deploy XOA:
- XOA image for home labber (default)
- Official Vates XOA image
- Ronivay’s image ( bleeding edge )
- Your custom image
One of the goals is to provide a stripped-down XOA image that removes banners related to the lack of commercial support, as well as features that require a license — simplifying the XOA experience for home-labbers. This image, XOA-HL, is built from the xoa-hl and build-xoa-hl repositories.
For stability and maintainability, both patched components are pinned to a specific upstream version: building against upstream master is too risky, with a high chance of breaking the builds every time upstream moves. XO Lite HL is built from a fixed upstream tag (currently xo-lite-v0.21.0) and XOA-HL from a fixed Xen Orchestra commit (currently 5.113.2, the last XO 5.x release) — for now, XOA-HL defaults to the XO v5 web UI, not XO v6. Pins are only bumped deliberately, after testing, so upstream changes can never break existing deployments. The exact versions shipped with each release are recorded in the Release Matrix.
Download
All ISO and RPM releases are signed with the XCP-ng HomeLab Edition GPG key. Verify your download before installing.
Verify the ISO
The community GPG key is published on keys.openpgp.org.
| Property | Value |
|---|---|
| Key file | xcp-ng-ce-public.asc (attached to each release) |
xcp-ng-ce.lid530@passmail.com | |
| Fingerprint | 2F59 1DB9 D2C1 28C4 C3D9 63F4 6DA0 0DCA 5BBA 215A |
# Option 1 — fetch from keyserver
gpg --keyserver keys.openpgp.org --recv-keys 2F591DB9D2C128C4C3D963F46DA00DCA5BBA215A
# Option 2 — import from the release page
gpg --import xcp-ng-ce-public.asc
# Verify the ISO checksum file signature
# (checksum files are named after the ISO — example for v8.3-ce9)
gpg --verify xcp-ng-8.3-ce9.iso.sha256.asc xcp-ng-8.3-ce9.iso.sha256
# Verify the ISO
sha256sum -c xcp-ng-8.3-ce9.iso.sha256
Quick-start
1 · Install XCP-ng HL
Boot from the ISO. The installer is identical to upstream XCP-ng 8.3 — follow the official install guide.
2 · Open XO Lite
After installation, point your browser at:
http://<your-host-ip>
Log in to XO Lite with your XCP-ng root credentials.
3 · Deploy XOA
In XO Lite, click Deploy XOA. Fill in the required information, (IP, user, password, etc ) When you trigger the deployment, XO Lite calls the bundled xoa-proxy which streams the XOA image (ie image.xva.gz) directly to XAPI. More details on this in the Developers/xoa-proxy section.
4 · Connect XO to your host
Once the XOA VM has started, open it in your browser and add your XCP-ng host:
Settings → Servers → Add server
Host : <your-XCP-host-ip>
User : root
5 · Keep it up to date
XCP-HL ships its components as signed RPMs, so a running host updates in place. Available updates appear in Xen Orchestra under Home > Hosts > <your host> > Patches. See Updates for how that works, how to bootstrap an older host, and how to roll back.
Architecture at a glance
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ XCP-ng HL Host │
│ │
│ ┌──────────────┐ patch ┌──────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ XO Lite HL │ ────────► │ DeployXoaView (community) │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │
│ └──────┬───────┘ └───────────┬──────────────────┘ │
│ │ │ HTTP │
│ ┌──────▼───────────────────────────────▼──────────────────┐ │
│ │ xoa-proxy │ │
│ │ HTTP · HTTPS · gzip · streaming XVA delivery │ │
│ └──────────────────────────┬──────────────────────────────┘ │
│ │ XAPI VM.import │
│ ┌──────────────────────────▼──────────────────────────────┐ │
│ │ XAPI / Dom0 │ │
│ └─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘ │
└──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
Components
| Repository | Role |
|---|---|
xcp-hl | Documentation |
xolite-ce | XO Lite community patch + RPM build |
xcp-ng-ce-iso | ISO assembly pipeline and release |
xoa-proxy | Rust HTTP/gzip proxy for XVA delivery + RPM build |
xoa-hl | HomeLab-patched Xen Orchestra appliance (XOA-HL) — simplified UI, RPM + container build |
build-xoa-hl | Packer pipeline that builds the XOA XVA image on XCP-ng and publishes it as a release |
buildorchestration | Rust build orchestrator — triggers, monitors and diagnoses all component builds daily |
Full technical details in the Developer section.
License
XCP-ng HL is released under the GNU AFFERO GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE v3.0. It builds on upstream XCP-ng (Apache 2.0 / GPL components) and Xen Orchestra (AGPL-3.0).
XCP-ng Home lab Edition is an independent community project. While being downstream, it is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or supported by Vates SAS or the XCP-ng project.