Installation
Deploying Xen Orchestra takes a few minutes: you deploy the Xen Orchestra Appliance (XOA), a pre-built VM with everything configured, directly on one of your hosts. Nothing is installed on the hosts themselves, and nothing changes in your infrastructure: XOA is just another VM.
This page walks the whole journey: deploy, first login, registration, and the first console and network settings. If you prefer building from the sources instead, the community method has its own page.
Deploy XOA
Log in to your account and use the deploy form on vates.tech/deploy:
All the deploy code runs within your browser: nothing is sent to our servers. Your credentials and host details never leave your network.
The wizard walks four steps: Connect (your host address and credentials), Configure (storage and network for the appliance, DHCP or static), Secure, and Deploy. It then imports and starts the VM on the storage repository you picked:
XOA specifications and sizing
By default, the deployed VM is configured with:
- 2 vCPUs
- 2 GiB of RAM
- 20 GiB of free SR space (2 GiB on thin provisioned SR)
Sizing your XOA
The right size depends on what you ask of it:
| Usage | vCPUs | RAM |
|---|---|---|
| A few pools, no backup jobs, no V2V | 2 | 2 GiB (strict minimum) |
| Enterprise usage (backup jobs, V2V, more pools) | 4 | 4 GiB minimum |
| Working at scale (large infrastructure, heavy backup load) | 4 to 8 | 8 GiB |
A few rules of thumb:
- 2 GiB and 2 vCPUs is the strict minimum, fine for a few pools without backups or V2V.
- As soon as you use XOA in an enterprise context, 4 GiB and 4 vCPUs should be your baseline.
- 8 GiB is better when working at scale, and 8 vCPUs can bring extra speed when you run a lot of backups (transfers and compression are parallel workloads).
- You can always give more, but measure afterwards to check the improvement is real before going further.
First login
Once the VM is running, open its IP address in your browser. If you did not set a fixed IP or are unsure which one it got:
# xe vm-list params=name-label,networks | grep -A 1 XOA
or check your router's DHCP leases for an xoa entry.
- Default web UI credentials:
admin@admin.net/admin. Change them right after the first login: create a new admin account and remove this one. If you ever lose your password, you can reset the configuration to get the default credentials back. - Console and SSH have no default password: you set one during deployment, or later from the host.
Register and start your trial
The first thing to do in your new XOA is to register it, from the Updates view: registration is what enables updates and the free 30-day trial. Use your account.vates.tech credentials:
Appliance images are not rebuilt every month, unlike Xen Orchestra itself: right after deploying, an update is usually available. Register, update, then explore.
To try everything XO can do, start the trial from the same view ("Start Trial", the green button), and click Upgrade: your appliance runs the complete Premium feature set for 30 days.
When the trial ends, the appliance keeps working and simply returns to the Free feature set: you lose no data and no configuration. For system-level settings of the appliance (firewall, NTP, service restart), see the XOA appliance settings.
Alternative deployment methods
Use these when the web deploy form is not an option (no Internet access from the browser, automation, restricted environments).
Via XO Lite
If your hosts run XCP-ng 8.3 or later, XO Lite is already waiting on every host: open https://your-host-ip in a browser, log in with the host root credentials, and use its Deploy XOA action. Nothing to download, nothing to install: XO Lite is served directly by the host.
Via a bash script
From your XCP-ng or XenServer host:
# bash -c "$(wget --no-verbose -O- https://xoa.io/deploy)"
The script asks for the IP configuration (DHCP by default, or a fixed address with netmask, gateway and DNS) and imports the XOA VM into your default storage repository. It writes nothing else on the host, and you can move the VM elsewhere afterwards.
On old XCP-ng or XenServer versions, HTTPS may fail with an SSL error (SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO). You can fall back to plain HTTP: bash -c "$(wget --no-verbose -O- http://xoa.io/deploy)".
Via a manual XVA download
Download the XOA as an XVA file from xen-orchestra.com, then import it from your host CLI (or from XO Lite):
# xe vm-import filename=xoa_unified.xva
# xe vm-start vm="XOA"
To set a fixed IP address before the first start:
# xe vm-param-set uuid="$uuid" \ xenstore-data:vm-data/ip="$ip" \ xenstore-data:vm-data/netmask="$netmask" \ xenstore-data:vm-data/gateway="$gateway"
And to replace the default DNS server:
# xe vm-param-set uuid="$uuid" xenstore-data:vm-data/dns="$dns"
First console connection
If you deployed with the web form, you already chose the xoa user password. Otherwise, there is no default password, for security reasons: set one from your host, using the XOA VM UUID (found with xe vm-list):
# xe vm-param-set uuid=<UUID> xenstore-data:vm-data/system-account-xoa-password='MyPassW0rd!'
Reboot the VM to apply, then connect with ssh xoa@<XOA IP>.
Once connected, sudo -s gives you a root shell, so you do not have to prefix every administration command:
# sudo -s [sudo] password for xoa:
Network configuration
XOA uses DHCP by default. To switch to a static address, run xoa network static and answer the prompts; xoa network dhcp goes back to DHCP:
# xoa network static ? Static IP for this machine 192.168.100.120/24 ? Gateway 192.168.100.254 ? IP of the DNS server 192.168.100.254
Xen Orchestra is then available at https://your-vm-ip.
To configure another interface than the default one, pass its name as an argument (xoa network static enX1, xoa network dhcp enX1). To add more IP addresses on an already configured interface, use the --add flag:
# xoa network static --add ? Static IP for this machine 192.168.200.120/24
From the sources
Xen Orchestra is fully open source and can also be built from its sources, without professional support. This community installation method has its own dedicated page.