About the Xen Wiki

This Wiki is the shared workspace for the Xen Open Source community. The community is developing the industry’s only 100% Open Source hypervisor, and relies on contributions from the world’s leading systems developers. Citrix hosts the site on behalf of the community, and views its role in fostering the Open Source development process as critical to the long term success of Xen in the enterprise.

Supported Languages in the Wiki: En español / In Deutsch / En français / 中文 / 日本語 / 한국어 / На русском языке / in Italiano

What is Xen?

The Xen® hypervisor, the powerful open source industry standard for virtualization, offers a powerful, efficient, and secure feature set for virtualization of x86, x86_64, IA64, ARM, and other CPU architectures. It supports a wide range of guest operating systems including Windows®, Linux®, Solaris®, and various versions of the BSD operating systems. Read more at the Xen Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The community is primarily operated via a series of user mailing lists and a community blog which are all summarized on a weekly basis in the Wiki.

To learn more about Xen: Xen Case Studies, University of Cambridge Examples, Xen Demo Laptop, Cool Configurations, Public Server Examples, Aplura Xen Deployment , and Xenoppix -- Knoppix customized with Xen. A new book + DVD has been published in Japan called Chou Kanntan Xenoppix (Chou Kanntan means Super Easy).

How do I get Xen up and running?

The easiest method is to try and run Xen without any installation using the LiveCD. For those looking to download and compile a complete Xen platform; Xen documentation, HowTos, and Miscellaneous Installation Notes are available in this Wiki. There is also information concerning the various distributions that support Xen. For a list of supported hardware (not 100% up to date or complete), you can try the Server Hardware Comparability List and USB Device Support List. Finally, a list of available Pre Built DomU Images is available.

Where do I go for help?

The Xen community offers several support options for users at http://www.xen.org/support/. Included in the support offerings are the xen-user mailing list, IRC - Freenode:##xen, xen mailing list archives, IRC archives, XenUsersQuestions, Distribution Support, and Xen Distro Support Guide.

What if I find a problem?

To assist users looking to debug the Xen hypervisor, the community offers a XenDebugging page in the Wiki. A public Bugzilla system is also in place for recording all bugs found during execution; however, it is strongly recommend that you first search the Xen community mailing lists to see if anyone else has discovered this problem. The Xen community also encourages you to email your bug to the xen-devel mailing list for developer discussion before posting to Bugzilla.

Where can I find products or services for Xen?

Several companies build solutions on Xen and consultancies provide services for Xen implementation; a searchable listing of some of those companies can be found here. This wiki also contains a listing of Hosting Service Providers, Virtualized Grid / Clustered / Elastic Hosting Providers, Consulting Firms, and Consultants.

There are also many projects based on Xen that provide unique solutions. A list of these projects is available on the community website as well as within this Wiki.

Where can I find information about developing for Xen?

All Xen information related to developing for Xen is located on the Xen Developer Home Page in this wiki.

How to contribute to this site

Being a wiki, the site can be updated by anyone - however you will need to create an account on this site. If you’re part of the Xen developer community, please take the time to register and get involved. Feel free to add, correct, and edit page. Please also send us your feedback so that we can be responsive to the community’s needs.

If you would like to edit a page, please email stephen.spector@xen.org for permissions. We have setup a special file to control editing as we are securing the site from spam. One or two "official" pages are not writable.
Search for page titles or text within pages using the search box at the top of any page.
See HelpForBeginners to get you going, HelpContents for all help pages.
WikiSandBox: A place for experimentation-- feel free to change this page and experiment with editing