Install Xen Orchestra on Ubuntu 20.04|Debian 10 to Manage Xen/XCP-ng

Xen Orchestra (XO) is a web interface tool for Xen and XCP-ng Administrators to visualize and administer the complete Virtualization stack. The Xen Orchestra doesn’t require an agent installed on the Desktop machine for it work. All operations are performed from a web interface.

On the VM that hosts Xen Orchestra below are the minimal hardware requirements:

• 2 vCPUs
• 2GiB of RAM
• 20GiB of free SR space (2GiB on thin pro SR)

The installation can be done on an instance running in XCP-ng or any other virtualization environment provided connectivity to Xen/XCP-ng servers is available.

To use a ready appliance refer to Deploying Xen Orchestra Appliance on Xen/XCP-ng from CLI

Step 1: Update System

Let’s start the installation by updating all the system packages:

sudo apt update

Also consider performing an upgrade:

sudo apt upgrade -y

With the upgrade done you can reboot now or at later stage.

Step 2: Install Node.js 14 on Ubuntu | Debian

The next step is the installation of Node.js on Ubuntu / Debian Linux system:

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo bash -

Once the repository is added proceed to install Node.js:

sudo apt install -y nodejs

To install the Yarn package manager, run:

curl -sL https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian/pubkey.gpg | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg >/dev/null
echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/yarnkey.gpg] https://dl.yarnpkg.com/debian stable main" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/yarn.list
sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get install yarn

Confirm installation of Node.js and Yarn

$ node -v
v14.16.1

$ yarn -v
1.22.5

Step 3: Install XO packages on Ubuntu 20.04|Debian 10

Install Python:

#For Python 2
sudo apt install python2-minimal

#For Python 3
sudo apt install python3-minimal

Install XO packages on Ubuntu 20.04|Debian 10 by running the commands below:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install build-essential redis-server libpng-dev git libvhdi-utils lvm2 cifs-utils

Confirm package installations:

The following NEW packages will be installed:
  binutils binutils-common binutils-x86-64-linux-gnu build-essential cifs-utils cpp cpp-9 dpkg-dev fakeroot g++ g++-9 gcc gcc-9 gcc-9-base
  libalgorithm-diff-perl libalgorithm-diff-xs-perl libalgorithm-merge-perl libasan5 libatomic1 libbfio1 libbinutils libc-dev-bin libc6-dev libcc1-0 libcrypt-dev
  libctf-nobfd0 libctf0 libdpkg-perl libfakeroot libfile-fcntllock-perl libgcc-9-dev libgomp1 libhiredis0.14 libisl22 libitm1 libjemalloc2 liblsan0 liblua5.1-0
  libmpc3 libpng-dev libpng-tools libquadmath0 libstdc++-9-dev libtalloc2 libtevent0 libtsan0 libubsan1 libvhdi-utils libvhdi1 libwbclient0 linux-libc-dev
  lua-bitop lua-cjson make manpages-dev redis-server redis-tools zlib1g-dev
0 upgraded, 58 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 42.3 MB of archives.
After this operation, 184 MB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y

Step 4: Fetch Xen Orchestra Code and Build it

Next is to clone Xen Orchestra code from github:

git clone -b master http://github.com/vatesfr/xen-orchestra

Now that you have the code, you can enter the xen-orchestra directory

cd xen-orchestra

The start building of Xen Orchestra and install other dependency packages on Ubuntu / Debian system.

$ yarn
yarn install v1.22.5
[1/5] Validating package.json...
[2/5] Resolving packages...
[3/5] Fetching packages...
warning [email protected]: Invalid bin field for "url-loader".
info [email protected]: The platform "linux" is incompatible with this module.
info "[email protected]" is an optional dependency and failed compatibility check. Excluding it from installation.
info [email protected]: The platform "linux" is incompatible with this module.
info "[email protected]" is an optional dependency and failed compatibility check. Excluding it from installation.
[4/5] Linking dependencies...
[5/5] Building fresh packages...
Done in 180.55s.

$ yarn build
...
Using polyfills: No polyfills were added, since the `useBuiltIns` option was not set.
[10:36:00] Finished 'buildStyles' after 6.95 s
[10:36:00] Finished 'copyAssets' after 6.96 s
Successfully compiled 129 files with Babel (17350ms).

[10:37:55] Finished 'buildScripts' after 2.03 min
[10:37:55] Finished 'build' after 2.03 min
Done in 138.77s.

Now you have to create a config file for xo-server:

cd packages/xo-server
sudo mkdir /etc/xo-server
sudo cp sample.config.toml /etc/xo-server/config.toml

In this config file, you can change default ports (80 and 443) for xo-server. If you are running the server as a non-root user, you will need to set the port to 1024 or higher.

You can try to start xo-server to see if it works. You should have something like this:

$ sudo yarn start
yarn run v1.22.5
$ node bin/xo-server
  app-conf /home/jkmutai/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/config.toml +0ms
  app-conf /etc/xo-server/config.toml +6ms
2021-04-20T10:42:27.569Z xo:main INFO Configuration loaded.
2021-04-20T10:42:27.575Z xo:main INFO Web server listening on http://[::]:80
2021-04-20T10:42:27.651Z xo:mixins:hooks DEBUG start start…
2021-04-20T10:42:27.774Z xo:mixins:hooks WARN start failure 
  error: Error: Command failed with exit code 5: vgchange -an
    Logical volume ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv contains a filesystem in use.
    Can't deactivate volume group "ubuntu-vg" with 1 open logical volume(s)
      at makeError (/home/jkmutai/xen-orchestra/node_modules/execa/lib/error.js:59:11)
      at handlePromise (/home/jkmutai/xen-orchestra/node_modules/execa/index.js:114:26)
      at processTicksAndRejections (internal/process/task_queues.js:93:5) 
    shortMessage: 'Command failed with exit code 5: vgchange -an',
    command: 'vgchange -an',
    exitCode: 5,
    signal: undefined,
    signalDescription: undefined,
    stdout: '',
    stderr: '  Logical volume ubuntu-vg/ubuntu-lv contains a filesystem in use.\n' +
      `  Can't deactivate volume group "ubuntu-vg" with 1 open logical volume(s)`,
    failed: true,
    timedOut: false,
    isCanceled: false,
    killed: false
  

  app-conf /home/jkmutai/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/config.toml +219ms
  app-conf /etc/xo-server/config.toml +2ms
2021-04-20T10:42:27.799Z xo:xo-mixins:subjects INFO Default user created: [email protected] with password admin
2021-04-20T10:42:27.807Z xo:mixins:hooks DEBUG start finished
2021-04-20T10:42:27.808Z xo:mixins:hooks DEBUG clean start…
2021-04-20T10:42:27.822Z xo:mixins:hooks DEBUG clean finished
2021-04-20T10:42:27.931Z xo:main INFO Setting up / → /home/jkmutai/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-web/dist

Use forever-service to install XO as a system service:

$ sudo yarn global add forever
yarn global v1.22.5
[1/4] Resolving packages...
[2/4] Fetching packages...
[3/4] Linking dependencies...
[4/4] Building fresh packages...

success Installed "[email protected]" with binaries:
      - forever
Done in 21.97s.

$ sudo yarn global add forever-service
yarn global v1.22.5
[1/4] Resolving packages...
[2/4] Fetching packages...
[3/4] Linking dependencies...
[4/4] Building fresh packages...

success Installed "[email protected]" with binaries:
      - forever-service
      - get-forever-config
Done in 8.77s.

$ cd ~/xen-orchestra/packages/xo-server/bin/
$ sudo forever-service install orchestra -r root -s xo-server
forever-service version 0.5.11
Platform - Ubuntu 20.04.2 LTS
orchestra provisioned successfully

Below are the commands to interact with service orchestra:

Start   - "sudo service orchestra start"
Stop    - "sudo service orchestra stop"
Status  - "sudo service orchestra status"
Restart - "sudo service orchestra restart"

Let’s start the service:

sudo service orchestra start

Confirm the service is running:

$ sudo ss -tunelp | grep *:80
tcp    LISTEN  0       511                        *:80                  *:*      users:(("node",pid=269785,fd=18)) ino:1883628 sk:9 v6only:0 <->

If you ever need to delete the service, run the command:

sudo forever-service delete orchestra

Additionally install xo-cli tool.

$ sudo npm install --global xo-cli
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: Use mz or fs-extra^3.0 with Promise Support
npm WARN deprecated [email protected]: looking for maintainer
/usr/bin/xo-cli -> /usr/lib/node_modules/xo-cli/dist/index.js
+ [email protected]
added 75 packages from 50 contributors in 26.199s

Step 5: Access Xen Orchestra Web interface

You can now access the web UI of Xen Orchestra by putting the IP you configured during deployment into your web browser.

Use below default login credentials:

Username: [email protected]
Password: admin

Navigate to “Settings” > “Users“

Select admin user and click “edit” under Password section to update user’s password.

Step 6: Add XenServer | XCP-ng Server

Add the Xen|XCP-ng server by going to “Home” > “Add server“

Input the server label, IP Address, Username and Password used to login.

Confirm connection is successful

You can now see existing Virtual Machines and create new ones from XO console.