Features

Current release · v8.3-ce50 · October 2026 · Based on XCP-ng 8.3

Base platform

XCP-hl is based on XCP-ng 8.3, with changes to the installer, XO Lite, XOA deployment and package delivery. The base platform uses the upstream hypervisor and management stack; hardware and feature requirements still apply.

Customisations

Patched XO Lite

XO Lite is the lightweight single-page management UI bundled with every XCP-ng host. XCP-hl changes one screen in it: at build time, an automated tool rewrites small, targeted pieces of xoa-deploy.vue (see Components if you want the exact mechanism).

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 (default)

The XOA image deployed by the proxy is xoa-hl: Xen Orchestra built from source for XCP-hl, with the license-gated menu items and support banners stripped out. See Components for how it is built.

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.

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.

Custom image

Any XVA, plain or gzipped, served over HTTP or HTTPS. Point the deploy screen at your own URL: your own build, an older release you kept around, or an image hosted anywhere reachable from the host. Credential fields are left blank for you to fill in; nothing is pre-filled since XCP-hl has no way to know what the image expects.

GPG signing

All XCP-hl artifacts are signed with the XCP-hl GPG key, so anyone can confirm a package or ISO really came from this project and was not tampered with. This section is reference detail for verifying that yourself; most readers can skip straight to What you get.

Key structure

The key follows an offline master + subkeys model:

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:

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 https://<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.

XOA-hl: the administration WebUI

Deploying the hl image gives you Xen Orchestra running in its own VM. XOA-hl provides:

• Host and VM administration through the Xen Orchestra 5 interface: inspect resources and manage virtual machines.
• Backup and scheduling controls from the source-built Xen Orchestra application.
• XCP-hl host updates in the host and pool Patches tabs, including the XCP-hl repositories.
• Appliance update controls under Settings → XOA-HL Updates. The host and the appliance are updated separately.
• Focused menus: the Vates appliance updater, Hub, proxies and XOSTOR menu entries are hidden; the community banner links to XCP-hl documentation.

This description is based on xoa-hl release v5.113.2_e281c536-ce20, which pins Xen Orchestra to 5.113.2. Other image choices have their own features and update mechanisms. See Updates and the XOA-hl component.

Known limitations in this release

Recent releases

The five newest ISO releases and the component versions each one shipped. Every release is in the Release Matrix, and what changed and why is in the Changelog.