Here’s a solution I’ve been meaning to talk about for a while — and with the ongoing drama around Broadcom swallowing up VMware, it couldn’t be more relevant. If you’re clinging to your aging vSphere setup or feeling the pinch from recent ESXi licensing changes, it’s time to look at a serious open-source contender. And this one’s made in France. Cocorico!
Say hello to XCP-ng, the hypervisor built on the rock-solid Xen technology, and Xen Orchestra, the web-based cockpit that lets you manage it all. Together, they form a robust, flexible, enterprise-grade virtualization platform — without the bloat or the proprietary shackles.
XCP-ng: More Than a Proxmox Alternative
While Proxmox has earned a name for itself in the open-source space, XCP-ng is carving its own path. It’s not just another KVM wrapper — it’s built on Xen, a Type 1 hypervisor used by giants like AWS and formerly Citrix. In fact, XCP-ng was born from frustration with Citrix XenServer becoming increasingly closed.
It’s fully open-source, actively maintained, and surprisingly stable for both labs and production-grade environments. Features like high availability, VM live migration, SR-IOV, GPU passthrough, and ZFS support are all there — often without requiring complex setup.
And unlike VMware’s increasingly aggressive licensing model, you won’t get nickel-and-dimed for every little checkbox.
Xen Orchestra: Your Open-Source vCenter Replacement
Managing XCP-ng clusters is done through Xen Orchestra, an elegant and powerful web interface. You can use it to create, clone, migrate, snapshot, and back up VMs — even across hosts — with ease. Think of it as your vCenter, but with a cleaner UI and no proprietary lock-in.
The best part? You can deploy it entirely for free using a community-maintained Docker Compose setup. That’s right — all the features, no license key, no trial expiration. Just spin it up and go:
👉 https://github.com/ronivay/xen-orchestra-docker
Of course, if you’re running this in production or need enterprise-grade support, the project also offers professional plans with support and additional features. And those plans are refreshingly straightforward.
Pricing: Transparent, Fair, and Scalable
Let’s face it — if you’re managing critical infrastructure, free is great, but you also want to know there’s someone on the other end when something breaks.
Xen Orchestra’s pricing model is one of the clearest in the industry:
- Essential — $2,000/year
For small infrastructures with standard needs.
Up to 3 hosts, 6 support tickets per year, business day support, 24h response time for critical issues. - Essential+ — $4,000/year
Same 3-host limit, but includes unlimited tickets and full feature access.
Ideal for small teams needing more flexibility without going full enterprise. - Pro — $1,000/host/year
Designed for infrastructures with 3 or more hosts, offering unlimited tickets, business day support, and the same 24h SLA. Balanced price-to-feature ratio. - Enterprise — $1,800/host/year
For serious business-critical setups.
Requires 4+ hosts, includes 24/7 support, 1-hour response time, setup and upgrade assistance, and full access to everything.
The pricing is predictable, and you’re not punished for scaling up. Compare that to VMware’s recent price hikes, and you start to understand why so many are switching.
Current Limitations (But Not for Long)
No platform is perfect, and XCP-ng does have a couple of pain points — though they’re being worked on.
Nested virtualization is the most notable. If your plan is to run Docker inside a Windows VM — which relies on Hyper-V — that’s not going to work smoothly under Xen right now. It’s a limitation of the Xen hypervisor itself, not XCP-ng specifically. Not a deal-breaker for most use cases, but worth knowing.
Another limitation — 2TB disk size — is also on the way out. XCP-ng currently uses the VHD format for virtual disks, which imposes this cap. But the team is actively migrating toward QCOW2, which should unlock larger disk sizes and bring better performance and flexibility.
Seamless VM Management and Backup
This is where XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra really shine.
Want to live-migrate a VM between hosts? Easy — and you don’t even need to set up a formal cluster. Just connect your hosts and storage, and Xen Orchestra handles the rest.
Backups? Built-in. You can schedule full or delta backups, replicate to remote sites, and even archive to Amazon S3 or other S3-compatible storage. All from the web UI. No plugins. No cron job nightmares.
It’s surprisingly mature and production-ready, even for picky sysadmins.
Final Thoughts
In 2025, you no longer need to be locked into proprietary platforms or dread license audits just to run your infrastructure. XCP-ng and Xen Orchestra offer a refreshing alternative that’s fast-moving, community-powered, and ready for real-world production.
If you’re experimenting in a homelab, managing a few VMs for your agency, or running hundreds of virtual machines across racks of hosts — this stack can handle it.
Give it a try. You might just find yourself wondering why you ever paid for vSphere in the first place.