Features — v8.3-ce39

Current release · September 2026 · Based on XCP-ng 8.3

Base platform
customisations
GPG signing
1. Key structure
What you get (full feature summary)
Known limitations in this release
Changelog

Base platform

XCP-hl is a drop-in ISO replacement for XCP-ng 8.3. It inherits the full upstream feature set, the differences are in XO Lite, XOA and the deployment workflow. Everything below the installer works exactly as in the official release.

Attribute	Value
Base release	XCP-ng 8.3 (latest upstream point release)
Hypervisor	Xen 4.17
Dom0 kernel	Linux 4.19 (XCP-ng kernel)
Management API	XAPI (Xen API)
Default networking	Open vSwitch (OVS)
Installer	XCP-ng text installer

customisations

Patched XO Lite

XO Lite is the lightweight single-page management UI bundled with every XCP-ng host. In XCP-hl, we patch xoa-deploy.vue using patterns.

The upstream xo-lite version is pinned via the UPSTREAM_TAG file in xolite-ce (currently xo-lite-v0.21.0, the last known-good release) and only moves when that pin is deliberately bumped.

What the patch changes:

The “Deploy XOA” screen now has a “XOA Image URL” selector to choose your XO deployment.

Everything else in XO Lite — VM management, console access, SR browsing, host metrics — remains untouched.

xoa-proxy — local XVA delivery

A purpose-built Rust HTTP server (xoa-proxy) is bundled with the ISO and runs on the host. It:

Serves the community XOA image with support for gzip-compressed format.
Supports both HTTP and HTTPS (including self-signed certificates).

HomeLab XOA image

The XOA image deployed by the proxy is built by integrating XOA-HL Vagrantin/xoa-hl,

Ronivay’s XOA image

The XOA image deployed by the proxy is built from ronivay/XenOrchestraInstallerUpdater, a well-maintained community installer for self-hosted Xen Orchestra.

Detail	Value
XO version	Tracks latest stable XO release
Default admin user	`admin@admin.net`
Default admin password	`admin`
SSH user	`xo`
SSH password	`xopass`

Change the default passwords immediately after first login.

Vates XOA image

This is the official image provided by Vates for XCP-ng multi-host management. In this case you can specify the credentials at the deployment step.

GPG signing

All XCP-hl artifacts are signed with the XCP-hl GPG key.

Key structure

The key follows an offline master + subkeys model:

Role	Description
Master key	Certification only — kept offline, never used for signing
RPM signing subkey	Signs all community RPM packages (`xo-lite-community`, `xoa-proxy`)
ISO signing subkey	Signs the ISO checksum file (`xcp-ng-8.3-ceN.iso.sha256.asc`)

Property	Value
Key UID	`XCP-ng Community Edition (Master signing key)` — as shown by `gpg --list-keys`
Master key fingerprint	`2F59 1DB9 D2C1 28C4 C3D9 63F4 6DA0 0DCA 5BBA 215A`
Published	keys.openpgp.org
Email	`xcp-ng-ce.lid530@passmail.com`
Public key file	`xcp-ng-ce-public.asc` (attached to every release)

The public key file contains both signing subkeys. Importing it once is sufficient to verify both RPMs and the ISO checksum.

What you get (full feature summary)

Hypervisor & host management

Full XCP-ng 8.3 feature set — all VM types (HVM, PV, PVH), live migration (XenMotion), Storage XenMotion.
Storage Repositories — Local LVM, NFS, iSCSI (LVM & EXT), HBA/FC, XOSTOR (hyper-converged), SMB, ISO SR.
Ready-to-use ISO library: a dedicated 20 GB partition is reserved at install time and registered as an ISO SR on first boot, so you can upload installer images and build VMs without setting up storage by hand. See ISO storage.
GPU/vGPU — PCI passthrough and NVIDIA GRID vGPU support.
HA — pool high-availability with automatic VM restart on host failure.

ISO storage

Out of the box, XCP-ng has nowhere to put installer ISOs: no ISO SR exists, and creating one means picking a path, making a directory and running xe sr-create by hand. XCP-hl does that for you.

What you get. A fresh install reserves a 20 GB partition, formats it ext4 with the label xcphl-iso, mounts it at /var/opt/xen/xcp-hl-iso and registers it with XAPI as an ISO SR named XCP-HL ISO library. It shows up in Xen Orchestra straight away, so you can upload an ISO (Import → Disk, selecting the ISO SR) and boot a VM from it with no extra setup.

Disk requirement. XCP-hl asks for a 100 GB disk, which splits roughly as:

Area	Size
System partitions (root, backup, boot, logs, swap)	~41.5 GB
ISO library	20 GB
Local storage SR (VM disks)	~38.5 GB

Below 100 GB the reservation is skipped rather than squeezing VM storage down to a few GB. The install still completes and the disk is laid out exactly as stock XCP-ng would lay it out. You simply get no ISO library, and a line in /var/log/installer records why.

Where it applies. The partition is created by the installer, so it only exists on hosts installed from an XCP-hl ISO. A host installed from stock XCP-ng that later adds the XCP-hl repositories keeps its existing disk layout untouched: nothing repartitions a running machine. Those hosts can still create an ISO SR manually in the usual way.

Upgrading an existing XCP-hl host keeps the partition, since upgrades never repartition, and the ISO SR is picked up again from its filesystem label.

Known caveat. If you unplug the SR’s PBD and plug it back in without rebooting, XAPI will reattach it but the filesystem stays unmounted, so the library looks empty until the next reboot remounts it. This is inherent to how XCP-ng handles local (legacy_mode) ISO SRs and affects the built-in XCP-ng Tools SR in the same way; a reboot, or mount /var/opt/xen/xcp-hl-iso, restores it.

XO Lite (browser-based quick management)

Available at http://<host-ip> immediately after install:

Pool and host overview (CPU, RAM, storage at a glance).
VM list: start, stop, reboot, console access.
Basic SR and network inspection.
HomeLab deploy flow: one-click XOA deployment with no external connectivity required if you host your XOA image locally.

Xen Orchestra (after XOA deployment)

After “Deploy XOA” in XO Lite, you get a full Xen Orchestra instance:

Full lifecycle VM management — create, clone, migrate, snapshot.
Agentless backup — full, delta, continuous replication, disaster recovery.
Scheduling — cron-based backup jobs with configurable retention.
RBAC / delegation — roles (Admin, Operator, Viewer) and resource sets.
Monitoring & alerting — per-VM and per-host metrics, threshold alerts.
REST API + xo-cli — scriptable access to all resources.
Rolling pool upgrade — zero-downtime upgrades via XO.
XOSTOR — hyper-converged storage setup via the XO UI (3+ nodes).

Some features require a license distributed by Vates.

Known limitations in this release

Limitation	Status
Xolite-ce — Deploy button always accessible	issue#4 — switch button to “Access XOA” after successful deploy
Xoa-proxy — Logs are in UTC	issue#3 — investigation to be done
Xoa-proxy — Reduce the number of crates	issue#2 — investigation to be done
Xoa-proxy — Reduce memory footprint	issue#1 — xoa-proxy runs in Dom0; its memory impact must be controlled
XCP-hl — Release publication versioning	issue#4 — versioning is inconsistent across artifacts

Changelog

v8.3-ce9 (June 2026)

xolite-ce v0.21.0-ce6 — upstream xo-lite pinned to 0.21.0 (last known-good release; 0.22.0/0.23.0 broke the build) via the UPSTREAM_TAG file.
xoa-proxy v0.1.1.x — simplified RPM versioning (.static release suffix) and automated, categorized GitHub release notes.
Consistent artifact naming: xcp-ng-8.3-ceN.iso + .iso.sha256 + .iso.sha256.asc, published as xcp-ng-ce-iso GitHub Releases.

v8.3-ce alpha2 (May 2026)

Initial public release.
First usable release.
Provides basic feature to deploy from Vates, Ronivay, or custom URL.
GPG: offline master key + dedicated RPM and ISO signing subkeys. Public key published to keys.openpgp.org.

v8.3-ce (April 2026)

XO Lite patched: community deploy endpoint, read-only credential fields.
xoa-proxy Rust server bundled: HTTP/HTTPS, gzip streaming.
ISO assembled from upstream XCP-ng 8.3 with community RPM repo overlay.
GPG key infrastructure (4096-bit RSA, single key RPM-GPG-KEY-xcp-ng-ce).
GitHub Actions CI/CD pipeline: RPM build → ISO build → GitHub Releases.