Xen Project

Xen Project is an open source hypervisor and related virtualization technologies hosted under the Linux Foundation. It provides a virtualization layer that separates guest systems from the underlying hardware, addressing the need for isolation, platform control, and long-term engineering in infrastructure, embedded, security-sensitive, and automotive environments. The project is governed openly, with published governance, security response, and CI resources.

The core Xen Hypervisor supports hardware virtualization, with Arm build configurations for embedded and mobile devices, drivers for Linux and BSD host operating systems, and Windows PV Drivers. XAPI is an enterprise toolstack that adds management functionality and integrations for cloud, storage, and networking. Ecosystem projects include HVMI for hypervisor memory introspection, MirageOS and Unikraft for unikernel development, and XCP-ng, a turnkey virtualization platform typically managed with Xen Orchestra. Xen 4.22 adds modern hardware support, Arm improvements, RISC-V progress, Xenstore scalability updates, and a five-year security support lifecycle.

Xen is intended for engineers working close to the platform, including teams building cloud and infrastructure virtualization, embedded and automotive systems, and security tooling. The project is open source under the GPL2 license. Organizations can support the project through membership, including Premier Plus participation in the Xen Safety Committee, which provides maintained requirements, tests, tooling, evidence, and process documentation for certification-oriented programs.