 So I've been doing some testing with the Zen server, the XCPNG flavor of it. So I've done it in a pass with Citrix Zen server. I'm a fan of Zen server. I'm less a fan of the way Citrix has gone with Zen server and really eliminated some of the features. So this video is about the XCPNG Zen server. Now they they're in beta release, but for a beta, I'm really impressed. I've been testing it for about a week. I've loaded it on both my one of my backup machines and my home machine, which runs a handful of VMs in the backup one is more for testing and lab stuff we do, but I haven't had any problems with it first for a product that they, you know, said as a beta. They've done a great job of doing it. Now a lot of the people involved in this project are the same people involved in Zen Orchestra. So they have a vested interest in this product. Now one things I always like is open-source things that also have some type of business model attached to them because those are the projects that last, those are projects that, you know, I generally go really well, especially when you have the properly-minded people running them. This is, you know, the success story of Red Hat is having an operating system that is open-source but selling support packages and that's actually their business model as well. They sell both the Zen Orchestra. They have a paid support version and they have the Pro support, which it says coming soon, which is they set up a website. So you have the xcpng.org and xcpng.com, which is going to be the paid support. And this is great because a lot of people want to deploy something. Maybe they want to play with it in the lab or at home. And this is wonderful because you can get the full featured version with limited amount of support. But for those running enterprise who have a lot of complicated setups and they go, you know, I really want to be able to call someone who's an expert on this because, you know, running it's easy, but some of the complicated setups, they have an option for that where you can get paid support. That's something they're working on. Like I said, this is a great way in my opinion to support any of these projects. Now, bring you through the install real quick and what it is and wasn't. So if you're not familiar with Zen Server at all, pretend you've never heard of it. It's a type one hypervisor, which means it stalls on the bare metal and is a completely loaded on the machine. It is a server and enterprise ready. We'll run it in a lot of enterprises. Zen server is very popular. It's very big. It's a really great product in my opinion. So really simple. You download the ISO, which they have a link here and I'll leave a link to this. It's easy to find. Download it, copy it to USB or burn it to a CD, whatever the methodology you're going to load on the server. Make sure you get a server ready for it. And they there's also you can Google the system requirements for it, but generally have plenty of hard drive space and plenty of memory because you're going to be running a bunch of virtual machines. So most modern processors support virtualization. There's a whole list on there that's not hard to find all that other current version. It says 7.4. They're actually following the same versions as a Citrix and server. The install was really straightforward. Nothing here. I didn't do a video directly on install because it's it's next to nesting your way through with a bunch of menus. There's nothing complicated or hard about it at all. One really cool feature that they added you can upgrade 7 to Zen server or perform a clean installation. Now I've done both. I built one server clean and the other server I went and did a upgrade. So I took my home server and I backed it up first just in case because they do say it's beta. But I did an in place upgrade of Citrix Zen server and it worked great. It managed all my VMs. None of the VMs crashed. None of them had any problems. So I've done both now and been running it and it's not had any issues at all. So that's that was wonderful to hear. Now the installation. The only thing they skipped right here is there's a spot where it asks you about networking. You can say DHCP or set your network address. I mean you select all the hard drives you want to provision for it. So if you have a system with multiple drives in it you can provision those for the setup. Also you in case you're wondering you do want to enable thin provisioning the you can look up within provisioning is but that's one other option other than that these screenshots will walk you through the setup. It's really straightforward. I do like the logo on boot. This is what it looks like on the screen and then you're into the management council that you see at the direct council. Now the first thing you're probably asking as well how do I manage it because you can't use the Citrix Windows Zen center thing. Well that's where we have this and I know this is you can just import VMs and download and import them. You can do it all from the command line. Some people aren't is adept at that. So what you can do is SSHN copy and I have a council pulled up over here paste and if you literally run in there and by the way I did customize my terminal here. Once you log into Zen server you can go in here and pull in and deploy the Zen orchestra tool. Now this there's two different versions in orchestra. There's the community edition which you have to build yourself and I may do a video on that sometime but you can get you this gives you the appliance version which is all set up configured. You don't have to know anything to get this thing running and once it's up and running you can log into the Zen orchestra. I'm actually go into the one it deploys which is this one right here and you can go in and see it working. Now this is our XTP NG backup and I called test box. We just built a second box to show it working but haven't had any problems at all with it. Like I said everything works really well. It's a great replacement. Now some of the downsides that some people have pointed out if I want to use the new VM I can create VMs all day and things like that but some people one of the things I like about Zen server is ability to import different types of OVA files. Then unfortunately if we do an import is only for the full version of this or you can load the community edition. Like I said this is an important distinction I wanted to make because some people say well I can't import my VMs so I don't like it as much. You can still do these things from the command line. You can still import XVA from the command line but you do need to either pay for support by a license from them or roll your own and this is actually my own server I rolled that has the entire version of it's the same thing but if you notice it's got the no support down here this is the other version. So it's still the same software this is the appliance version which has an updater built in which is why the little checkbox there this has no updater built in this is the community edition but you get all the features and there's always some people argue about that and as a methodology of open source they're like well it's really open source I'm like no what you're paying is for the labor it takes to build and maintain this entire package but they give you all the source code for free if you want to build and maintain it yourself so there's that but I will leave you with a link on how to get that how to get that version but most people to get started you're going to start with this and in general it does most of the basic things you need to do so you know I have here's a demo here's the council here's me starting a VM not a problem here it works perfectly fine it has the council inside of here the only thing you really lose is I think if I click the yeah this I can't just copy a VM to another machine but I can fork and migrate them back and forth between machines also one of these may be wondering feature support send motion and things like that moving machines between two separate hosts no problem so I can move my virtual machines around I can snapshot them all the features and all that are in here and that works you're just you don't get some of the import features and you have to do them from the command line which aren't that hard to do importing things from the command line is pretty straightforward in Zen server so it's overall I'm really happy with the product I'm going to do some more videos later on it and I'll probably do an install video on how to get sent orchestra community I'll leave you the link on how to actually download it though it's pretty straightforward this will walk you through how to install from source all the zen orchestra and get essentially the full version because some people like to see all the stats and everything else so for me yeah this one here dashboard this is what it looks like in case you're wondering so you can get statistics health reports overview of your servers attached to it things like that so if you want the full blown all the features one without paying for it there's some rules the rules are it's not commercially supported at all you have to handle all the updates you have to go through the install process building a vm and installing all this it does not install directly on the xcp ng you build this onto a virtual machine and then you run that virtual machine with it on here they've got really good documentation I followed it it was pretty easy to install I will leave you with something though to make it even one step easier I have on my system here I I did fork this I'm not the package maintainer so it may be broken at some point and maybe look at the original package maintainer I'm going to try to keep it up to date I use this one to install on a devian nine system and it worked perfectly fine I forked it because I did have to make a change because there was a problem with the way it was doing the logs and the problem might be me so I know this works on there but the original package maintainer is in here so you can see from where I fork this from so if you go to the original package maintainer and I'll leave this in the description below they have a docker image and everything that you can get for this and set it up which is great so it's pretty straightforward they do have a couple the repository things that you need to have installed in order to make this work so these are the different tools like I said this is I like the way they do this some people are like well it's not open source unless they give me a fully compiled fully supported version no you do have to do a little bit of work yourself on there which means you know updating packages and managing it which is a big part of because there's a lot of components that go into building is it's a big part of it is how to maintain it but it does work if you want the full version be able to import expert but overall I'm really happy with xcp ng it works great haven't had like I said been running it for a week without any issues I've got it running at home got it running on backup servers and test servers here all the migration works between the vm's no headaches so far like I said the only thing I can't demo for you though is the live migration it is supported but I don't have two machines with matching processors a lot of people have asked about that going hey how's the live migration work I'm like you need to have the best way to do it is get two pretty much identical machines because if you have different processor support in there operating systems are aware of the processor so the live migration or any ha stuff same problem you need matching machines I just don't have identical machines to try some of that to do some of that features to do the migration between a live demo but I can tell you the migration works perfectly fine in here so if we want to copy this to another server no problem you can whoops you can just select it copy the vm over to another server migrate it to another server select the storage repository this is not a problem I've done this I've moved them around didn't have any issues with it so I may do some more like in-depth videos on like processes by which you do that and how you handle it and we're actually building another windows 7 vm in here like I said we've tested it with windows and linux it's not had any problems at all so that's an overview of the xcp ng getting it set up getting installed and like I said does that orchestra if you listen to their appliance version it's easy it works good and maybe then you want to once you're in the appliance create a new vm and then try loading this one like I said you can load it from the sources if you want all the features and all the bells and whistles I would maybe do a more in-depth video on that because I'm still working out a couple things that I had to do when I set it up on I make sure I have a clean process to show you guys but for the most part if you're decent at linux and loading packages you can get that set up all right so if you like to content here like and subscribe if you got some questions about zen server or suggestions for videos leave them in the comments below I do my best to read through all the comments or jump on the Lawrence systems forums which is a link for in the description as well and of course I'll be leaving into the link to all the things I talked about in the description so you can download and play with this yourself and see if you like it they said some beta so I don't you know recommend deploying it for production but it works really well like I said a week of testing and I'm real happy with it so once again thanks and leave suggestions and stuff in the comments below