If you’ve been following my ESX Virtualization blog over the years (from the early VMware vSphere days back in 2008 all the way through the Broadcom acquisition chaos), you know I’ve always been vocal about one thing: virtualization shouldn’t cost an arm and a leg, and backup software shouldn’t be an afterthought (it should just works). The VMware licensing changes in recent years have pushed a lot of us – especially SMBs and mid-sized enterprises – to look for realistic alternatives. And right now, one of the most promising paths is the combination of XCP-NG (the open-source Xen-based hypervisor) managed by Xen Orchestra from Vates, paired with native Veeam support.
Just a few months ago (September/October 2025), Veeam released the public beta of their XCP-ng Plugin for Backup & Replication. The official GA release should be at the end of second quarter of 2026.
Veeam and Vates have formed a strategic alliance to support the French XCP-ng hypervisor and Xen Orchestra management platform, offering a sovereign alternative to VMware for SMEs and large enterprises.
Integration and Support Status
- Native Plugin Availability: A beta version of the XCP-ng plugin for Veeam is available on the Veeam R&D forum, with official support promised for the second quarter of 2026 according to Vates CEO Olivier Lambert.
- Veeam Data Platform 13: The latest version (released in late 2025) explicitly lists XCP-ng from Vates as a supported hypervisor alongside Scale Computing, Citrix XenServer, and Proxmox.
Strategic Partnership Details
- Ecosystem Expansion: The partnership allows Vates to offer a 100% French, sovereign stack including hypervisor, orchestration (Xen Orchestra), and backup, targeting the French market (but not only, for example XCP-NG is used by NASA!), and EU compliance needs.
- Commercial Integration: The collaboration extends beyond software compatibility, with Vates integrating partners like EasyVirt for capacity planning and cost optimization directly into the Xen Orchestra interface.
- Market Context: This move follows Veeam’s broader strategy to support KVM-based alternatives after Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, positioning XCP-ng as a credible, Linux-native option for cloud providers and traditional data centers.
The XCP-NG support is not some half-baked agent-based hack – its proper agentless incremental backups using the XCP-ng API and Changed Block Tracking (CBT). For anyone running (or planning to run) XCP-ng pools, this is huge. It will let you keep your existing Veeam infrastructure, policies, repositories, and reporting while exiting the VMware subscription tax.
I’ve been testing XCP-NG + XenOrchestra in the lab since early 2024, and I genuinely like what Vates has built. They’re not perfect yet as they’re struggling with 2TB+ drives still, but those things should be solved soon as they are on their final stage of testing.
Let’s break it all down – why this French/European stack matters, what the new Veeam partnership actually delivers, and how you can make it work for your environment.
Why XCP-NG + XenOrchestra Is the Smart European Alternative to VMware
XCP-NG is the next-generation open-source fork of the old Xen Cloud Platform (hence the “ng”). It’s maintained by Vates, a French company based in Grenoble. That’s right – fully European, no US corporate overlords dictating licensing every six months. Vates is a mid-sized company with exponential growth (you know why, right?).
The hypervisor itself is rock-solid:
- High performance (very close to bare-metal in many workloads)
- Built-in high availability at the pool level
- Live migration
- Load balancing (think DRS equivalent, but without the VMware tax)
- Support for all the storage you’d expect (local, NFS, iSCSI, Fibre Channel, and even their own XOSTOR software-defined storage)
The console of XCP-NG looks like ESXi, robuts, simple, only essentials.
But the real star for most admins is XenOrchestra (XO) – the web-based management console from Vates. You can run it as a lightweight VM (XO Lite for small setups) or the full Xen Orchestra Appliance for larger deployments. It gives you centralized control over hosts, pools, storage, networking, backups, and even disaster recovery. Think of it as a VMware vCenter for XCP-NG.
What I love most: it’s agentless by design. Backups are handled directly through the XAPI, with snapshots and incremental forever capabilities built in. Vates has been iterating on this for years, and their backup engine is fast, simple, and open-source friendly. For many shops, XO alone is enough for 3-2-1 backup strategies. Yes, Xen Orchestra has its own built-in backup tool, but also VMware import called “VMware To Vates” (V2V).
But here’s the thing – some enterprises still want (or need) the full enterprise backup feature set that Veeam has perfected over the last decade: application-aware processing (even if only via agents for now), immutable repositories, SureBackup verification, granular item-level recovery, malware detection, and seamless integration with tape or object storage. That’s exactly where the new Veeam partnership shines.
The Veeam + XCP-NG Partnership: Agentless Incremental Backups Done Right
Vates has been openly pushing Veeam for tighter integration since at least 2024 (Olivier Lambert, CEO of Vates, was very active on the Veeam forums). The community demand was loud and clear – especially from VMware refugees. Veeam listened, and the result is the XCP-ng Plugin (initially under the “XEN” label in private beta, now properly branded for XCP-ng in public beta).
This is native, agentless protection:
- Leverages the XCP-ng/Xen API directly (no agents inside guest VMs for basic image-level backups)
- Full and incremental backups using CBT (Changed Block Tracking) – exactly like you’re used to with VMware.
- Skips dirty blocks and swap files on NTFS volumes for efficiency.
- Configurable compression levels and block sizes (just like any other Veeam hypervisor job).
- Supports VMs, tags, or entire clusters/pools as sources.
Under the hood, Veeam deploys lightweight Worker VMs inside your XCP-ng environment (similar to proxies or the hotadd model in VMware/Proxmox). These workers handle data processing via hot-add transport. Veeam recommends one worker per host for best performance and redundancy, but even a single well-specced worker works fine for smaller pools. You can tune vCPU and memory if needed, though defaults are usually optimal.
Key supported features in the current release (as of the public beta and early GA feedback):
- Full and incremental forever backups with CBT
- VM restores directly back to XCP-ng pools
- Disk-level restores (export as VHD/VHDX/VMDK)
- File-level recovery (FLR) – no need for a separate FLR appliance in many cases
- Integration with Veeam Explorers via heuristics
- Malware detection, health checks, and basic SureBackup
- Backup Copy Jobs and tape support
Limitations (because it’s still maturing – fair enough for a new plugin):
- No Application-Aware Image Processing (AAIP) yet for Microsoft workloads (you can still use Veeam Agents inside VMs for that – perfectly supported). Example for a Domain controller(s), SQL Servers or Exchange (If still on prem).
- No VM/disk exclusions in jobs yet
- You add the pool via the Pool Master host IP/FQDN (not through XenOrchestra yet – Veeam says this is on the roadmap)
- Replication to other platforms has some caveats (e.g., network mapping quirks)
Performance in early tests has been very good – initial full backups hitting hundreds of MB/s depending on your storage and network, with incrementals flying thanks to CBT.
How to Get Started (High-Level Setup)
- Deploy XCP-NG + XenOrchestra first (obviously). Install the latest XCP-ng 8.3 LTS ISO, create your pool, and deploy Xen Orchestra. It’s straightforward and well-documented.
- Install the Veeam Plugin – For the beta it came baked into a special VBR 12.3.2 ISO. In production/GA it will likely be a separate installer or integrated into the Veeam Backup Appliance. (Link here, but most likely you’ll want to wait for the GA).
- Add your XCP-ng pool in Backup Infrastructure → Virtualization Platforms → XCP-ng. Use Pool Master credentials (Pool Admin role).
- Deploy Worker VMs – Veeam will prompt you. Place them on shared storage if possible.
- Create your backup jobs – Same familiar Veeam wizard. Select VMs/tags, choose repository, set retention, enable compression/deduplication, and you’re off.
It really does feel like adding another hypervisor type you already know.
Why This Combo Makes Sense in 2026
You keep your Veeam licenses (many of you already have them from VMware days). You avoid the Broadcom subscription shock. You get a modern, high-performance hypervisor stack from a European company that actually listens to the community. And you gain true agentless incremental backups that integrate seamlessly with the rest of your data protection strategy.
For smaller shops, XenOrchestra’s built-in backups might still be all you need. For anyone with compliance requirements, long-term retention, or complex recovery SLAs, layering Veeam on top is perfect. It’s the best of both worlds – open-source freedom + enterprise-grade backup.
The space never sleeps, and this partnership is proof. Vates and Veeam working together (even if indirectly through strong community demand) shows how the ecosystem is evolving post-VMware.
If you’re in the middle of a VMware migration or just evaluating alternatives, I strongly recommend spinning up a test XCP-NG pool with XenOrchestra and trying the Veeam plugin. The combination is mature enough for production in most SMB/mid-market scenarios.
What do you think? Have you already migrated to XCP-NG? Planning to test the Veeam integration? Drop your thoughts in the comments. Stay tuned for more hands-on testing and migration guides. As always, thanks for reading, and happy virtualizing!
Links for further reading on my blog (from my earlier posts):
XCP-NG Virtualization Platform with management by Xen Orchestra
Agentless Backup Solutions for XCP-ng Hypervisor (updated list)
Migration from VMware to another virtualization platform with Veeam Backup and Replication
Final Words
VMware isn’t going away overnight, but for many of us the writing is on the wall. XCP-NG + XenOrchestra + Veeam gives you a cost-effective, performant, and future-proof path forward – built by Europeans who understand what real admins actually need.
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