Modern Datacenter
The Xen Hypervisor Playbook
A Compelling, Full-Featured Alternative to VMware with External Storage Support
Modern Datacenter
A Compelling, Full-Featured Alternative to VMware with External Storage Support
The Xen Hypervisor Playbook is your guide to adopting a fully supported, open-source or enterprise-grade virtualization platform, without the VMware price tag. Whether you’re deploying Citrix workloads or building out a hyperconverged infrastructure with external storage arrays, XenServer and XCP-ng offer a flexible, secure, and future-ready alternative. XenTegra helps you deploy it all. From the hypervisor to backup, monitoring, and management—with a complete ecosystem of trusted vendors.
When it comes to replacing VMware or building out a new virtualization strategy, XenServer and XCP-ng give you more freedom, control, and cost-efficiency—without sacrificing features or support. Built on the mature and security-hardened Xen hypervisor, both platforms offer production-ready capabilities ideal for modern enterprise workloads.
Xen’s architecture separates critical components and minimizes attack surfaces, offering a strong isolation model ideal for regulated or sensitive environments.
Use SAN, NAS, iSCSI, or hyperconverged storage (like Vates XOSTOR)—the Xen Hypervisor ecosystem supports it all.
Whether you choose XenServer under a Citrix license or XCP-ng with commercial support from Vates, you’re backed by organizations committed to long-term product stability and enterprise SLAs.
The XenTegra blueprint for Xen Hypervisor provides you with a comprehensive portfolio of vendors to turnkey replace VMware in your hosting environment.
XenServer or Vates XCP-NG
CommVault Agentless Backup for Veeam & ExaGrid Tiered Backup Storage
Vates Xen Orchestra
LogicMonitor
Pure Storage, with support for broad External Storage or HCI Storage
XenServer is now an entitlement of the Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, and Citrix Platform License subscriptions for running your Citrix workloads.
All customers will be eligible for XenServer support, regardless of whether the support issue relates to a Citrix or non-Citrix workload. For non-Citrix workloads, best effort support will be provided. This means a resolution cannot be guaranteed if it requires a code change. (https://www.xenserver.com/support)
XCP-ng is an open-source virtualization platform built on the Xen Project hypervisor. It offers high performance, robust security, and seamless integration with existing tools.
Support for XCP-ng is provided by Vates Technologies on a subscription basis depending on the number of hosts in the environment. XCP-ng support from Vates covers all workloads, not just Citrix.
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Xen is an open-source, type-1 (bare-metal) hypervisor that allows multiple operating systems to run on the same physical hardware. It powers many commercial and open-source virtualization platforms.
XenServer is a virtualization platform based on the Xen Hypervisor, originally developed by Citrix. It includes enterprise-grade features like live migration, storage integration, and management tools.
XCP-ng (Xen Cloud Platform – Next Generation) is an open-source alternative to XenServer. It is a turnkey hypervisor based on Xen and designed to be community-driven, with full access to enterprise features without licensing fees.
All three typically require x86-64 CPUs with hardware virtualization support (Intel VT-x or AMD-V), at least 4GB of RAM (8GB+ recommended), and supported storage/network interfaces.
Yes. XCP-ng is designed to be installed directly on physical hardware and includes its own Linux-based OS optimized for virtualization.
Absolutely. Both XenServer and XCP-ng support external storage options including iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, and more—plus integration with hyperconverged tools like Vates XOSTOR.
Xen Hypervisor technology isn’t just about virtualization—it’s about building a resilient, scalable infrastructure that fits your organization’s specific needs. Whether you’re looking to deploy Citrix apps, migrate off VMware, or run a hybrid environment with external SAN, XenTegra can architect the complete solution.
Xen is a Type 1 hypervisor with no additional OS layer, offering direct access to hardware for better performance.
XCP-ng offers full-featured virtualization with no per-host or per-VM license fees.
Citrix XenServer includes LTS (Long-Term Support) versions for enhanced stability in production environments.
Live migration and high availability are supported in both XenServer and XCP-ng with shared storage setups.
Management GUIs include Xen Orchestra (web-based) and XenCenter (Windows-based).
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