The xen cloud platform (xcp) is an open source enterprise-ready server virtualization and cloud computing platform, with support for a range of guest operating systems, linux network and storage support.

xcp addresses the needs of cloud providers, hosting services and data centers by combining the isolation and multitenancy capabilities of the xen hypervisor with enhanced security, storage and network virtualization technologies to offer a rich set of virtual infrastructure cloud services. the platform also address user requirements for security, availability, performance and isolation across both private and public clouds.

xcp consolidates server workloads, enables savings in power, cooling, and management costs and thus contributing to environmentally sustainable computing, an increased ability to adapt to ever-changing it environments, an optimized use of existing hardware, and an improved level of it reliability.

this daemon is the fork-and-exec daemon used by xapi. when xapi requires another executable to be run, rather than forking and execing itself, it uses this single-threaded daemon to do it, passing fds to it as required.