Proxmox VE Reviews

We use this solution as our virtualization platform. It is a hypervisor that we use for our virtual needs to run servers.  

One of the things that I found most valuable is how easy Proxmox is to deploy. It can run on anything. Right now we are running it on some file servers that we have without any special configuration.  

I also like how it has got the same high-availability features as you get in a product like VMware. I get those benefits and I do not have to pay the $17,000 a year for the VMware license to enjoy them.  

Because Proxmox VE is open-source, the only expense we have is the support costs. You get an easy to use GUI that you can use to look to see who your virtual clients are and what hosts they are living on. You can also essentially vMotion — which is a VMware term but the feature in Proxmox does the same thing — to transfer a system.  

It is host-aware, so if the host Proxmox is living on crashes and there is another host in the cluster, it will automatically failover. That is just a great capability. It also can do the same thing if performance on the given host exceeds a certain threshold. You have the option to configure that as you want it with the product. It will automatically move to a different host to improve performance with the system and, in turn, improve the performance of the application running on it.  

Really every user interface could use a little bit of improvement. It is already very user-friendly at the present time but there are some ways that it can get even better.  

Another area that might have room for improvement is either building in or having third-party tools that could report on CPU and memory usage across your virtual platform. They have those tools for VMware and that helps you to point out resource bottlenecks so that you can right-size a VM. If a VM is soaking up too many resources, it is defeating the purpose of virtualization. Proximo is really missing those kinds of tools right now. You have to do that on your own. So that could definitely be an opportunity for improvement. It is not necessarily just room for Proxmox to grow, it is more of a possibility industry-wide for these products.  

I have been using Poxmox VE (Virtual Environment) for the last 12 months.  

The stability of Proxmox is good. It runs well, and they are constantly looking to improve the product. By "they" I mean the core group at Proxmox themselves. But the key part of the updates is everything is well-tested and the goal is obviously to maintain stability while upgrading the functionality.  

Proxmox is scalable. Let's say you wanted to add an additional host, or you wanted to add additional hosts just from memory or virtual CPUs, just for additional resources. You could just add a host. You do not need to buy a license to do it. That is better than just scalability, it is scalability without cost.  

With VMware, you have to buy a license or you need to use it free for 30 days, but eventually, you are going to have to procure another license. With this product, I can just take whatever server I have, install Proxmox on it, and that is it. I introduce it to the cluster during the install, and everything is up and running.  

So it is very, very easy to scale at will. I have not seen any limitations of the product itself that would prevent me from adding additional systems or or other resource into a cluster. By resources, I mean CPU, memory, drive space, or other performance enhancement.  

We do not even have to have anybody on staff who is here to maintain the system. It is just another part of the existing architecture that gets monitored by the systems that we already have in place. We have monitoring set up so that we can tell how the system is performing overall. We can generate reports within Proxmox to tell us how it is performing in a given cluster and how many hosts it has.  

We plan on keeping it as our virtual platform and we are pretty confident that it can scale with our needs. If our virtual needs increase, then that is exactly what we would do: scale it up. We can just run everything on it — anything not critical that is fine running on a VM. Right now, we are a very small company. There is plenty of room to grow and I do not expect Proxmox will be exhibiting pushback any time soon.  

Customer support is the only cost for the product and it is about $3,000 maximum. It depends on the support plan you choose. There are two different plans. If you want a 24 by seven plan or next business day, that is the difference. The plans are a little different but it is all very clearly laid out on their website.  

Their support is pretty good. Even if you did not want to pay support, the thing that is great about the product is that it is open-source. There are a lot of knowledgeable users nowadays and the pool is growing all the time. A lot of times you can just Google whatever issue you are having and likely come up with the solution to the problem.  

We did use a different solution prior to Proxmox VE, and that would be VMware. At this point, we have been able to migrate from VMware completely and we just use Proxmox.  

Before I got here, the company was strictly using VMware for this type of solution. I am not really sure if they looked at other solutions. When I got here I did not even know about Proxmox. I just assumed we were a VMware shop. But after I started, someone had discovered Proxmox and I started reading up on it. It was interesting enough that I started using it. As I did, I thought it felt very familiar. I kept testing and as far as I was concerned I could do everything in Proxmox VE that I was doing in VMware.  

The initial deployment of Proxmox did not really have all of the same features as VMware, but that was kind of the expected in a newer open-source product. They added the other features very quickly. How much the product is advancing is especially apparent with this latest release where it has got the same failover concerns as VMware does. They are called "high-availability" features.  

So now that you can get all the HA (high-availability) features that VMware has, there are not too many major differences between VMware and Proxmox. The only difference is you get it for no cost. It is easy to use, easy to manage, easy to scale, and there are probably going to be a whole lot more and better things coming down the pipe from them. It really has been a great effort on the part of the developers.  

The question of whether it is easy to set up or not really is more like five questions. They are pretty easy questions.  

We have the source on a thumb drive. You launch the system install from the thumb drive and the first question it wants answered are "What is the time zone," "What is the host hostname," and "What is the IP address?" There are three of the questions. With those three questions, you just started the installation on the target server.  

If you want to get running, there are two more important questions. You answer these questions the installer does its job and installs everything you need on your end and you are done. The two questions are "What is your username?" and "What is your password?" You answer those questions and you are done with the installation. You can see it has a high-level of difficulty.  

From the time the setup starts, the total time it takes to deploy everything is about 20 minutes. You do not need an integrator, reseller, or consultant to help you out with the installation. You can set up everything yourself.  

My advice on the pricing is that there is no pricing: it is free. The only thing you pay for is support and it is like $2,500 a year. The support is completely optional. But even the support is absolutely affordable for just about any company in the market. In any case, it is well below the cost of a VMware license.  

My advice to people considering the product is that they have nothing to lose. Run it in a development lab, make sure they are comfortable with it, and make sure that the application that their company runs can support that hypervisor. It should. Then deploy Proxmox and start saving money.  

I have been encouraging former colleagues of mine that are VMware users to start using Proxmox. I suggest they throw it in their development lab and spin it up and start building systems just so they can see the absolute benefits of this product and really enjoy the fact that they can have it as a solution at no cost.  

Proxmox is constantly coming out with updates. If the company you are working for has the appetite to run updates frequently in a production environment you can enjoy frequent releases. They are always looking to add additional features to the product. That is kind of nice. They have a very agile approach to the development of the application itself.  

What people are concerned about is that it is open source. But hopefully, they will start to realize all you have got to do is use the product, they do not have to program anything. It has got the same features that VMware has, but it is not as restrictive as VMware because it is open-source and you can actually build on it if you want to.  

In VMware, the hypervisor, which is called VirtualCenter, needs to live on its own system. It can not coexist with everything else. Proxmox does not have that issue. Proxmox can have everything living on one system. You will want more than one piece of hardware in a given cluster so you can set it up separately if you want to, but the possibility is there to put it all on one box. I think it is a little bit better than VMware in that sense because you have that flexibility.  

On a scale from one to ten where one is the worst and ten is best, I would rate Proxmox VE as a seven-out-of-ten. Ironically, I would rate VMware lower than Proxmox because of the price.  

I am using it to virtualize microservices.

I have also begun to integrate Proxmox into my DevOps pipeline through scripting.

I have a sensible virtualization technology to spin up VMs on demand.

I'm using several servers now.

The initial setup is straightforward.

The stability is good.

You can scale the solution.

The documentation is great.

If you have problems, you can find answers on their website.

I can't speak to any improvements. It is not lacking features. I have been keeping up with new versions and am thankful for all of the improvements made through the years.

I've been using the solution for five years now.

The stability is very good. It's reliable. There aren't bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. 

I haven't had any problems with scalability. I'm using it on several servers with large memory and hard disks and it's doing just fine.

M2 disks are completely supported if the bare metal server does.

Setting up the firewall is so easy that it can be managed with scripting.

Proxmox has become a centre of our IT-infrastructure.

I've only used their website when I've had questions. I've never spoken to anyone directly. Therefore, I can't speak to personal experience with technical support.

Positive

We previously used VMware. I switched due to the fact that I wanted to try something different.

The initial setup is not overly complex. It's very straightforward and very simple. 

I had a server that I needed to expose to the internet and I just decided to use it instead of VMware and it worked.

You only really need one person to handle maintenance, however, we have two people on staff that can handle those types of responsibilities. 

I handled the initial setup on my own. I did not need to use an implementation specialist or consultant. 

I've seen a very good ROI.

Collaboration and the networking of more than one server is becoming more important to me now. Preparing to switch to their licensing plan.

I just went directly to this product. I'm aware of other possibilities, KVM and others, however, I decided on Proxmox as it had a good following and good documentation.

Version 8 is almost completely in use now. Two servers are going to be upgraded to 8.

The ability to bond networks is fantastic. We can load-balance without difficulty.

I'd rate the solution at a ten out of ten.

The tool has very good performance.

The solution needs to improve its stability.

I have been using the solution for one month.

I would rate the tool’s stability a nine out of ten.

The tool’s setup is easy. The setup took two weeks to complete.

I would rate the solution a ten out of ten.

It's used for server virtualization on a client-facing network.

Its compatibility is most valuable. For any VM or specification, if I have the license, there could be one cluster for it.

The management can be better. It's not like VMware where you can get all clusters on a single dashboard. In VMware, you can literally see all the VMs running in one cluster regardless of the host.

I've been using this solution for just a year.

I'd rate it a six out of ten in terms of stability. Because we don't have a professional engineer for Proxmox VE, we are very reliant on our suppliers. So far, we haven't experienced any bugs, but as an IT specialist, I haven't had any formal training for Proxmox VE. It's an open-source virtualization platform.

It's scalable, but it lacks automation. You have to configure the memory for the system to be automated. I'd rate it a six out of ten in terms of scalability.

It's for our external servers, and we probably have more than five thousand users.

We are very reliant on our supplier for support. I haven't got any chance to get in touch with Proxmox support.

I've used other solutions. Proxmox VE is much harder to use than ESXi and AHV.

It's easy, but the management is not really that efficient for us, so I'd rate it a seven out of ten.

It usually takes two days to conclude. There is also migration. Migrating less than twenty VM to a newly configured Proxmox would approximately take two to three working days.

It's very cheap.

I'd recommend it for a small business or a startup business. It's very helpful for those who are starting up and have fewer users. For DR scenarios or use cases, it would be worth it.

Overall, I'd rate it a seven out of ten.

We are a service provider and we use Proxmox VE. We use the virtualizer mainly.

The most valuable feature of Proxmox VE is its ease of use.

The virtualizer in Proxmox VE could improve.

I have been using Proxmox VE for approximately one month.

I rate the stability of Proxmox VE a seven out of ten.

I do not have any users yet but I have 10 potential users.

I rate the scalability of Proxmox VE an eight out of ten.

I rate the support from Proxmox VE a nine out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup of Proxmox VE is complex. The full deployment took many weeks and I am still configuring it.

I rate the initial setup of Proxmox VE a seven out of ten.

We used two people for the deployment of the solution.

The price of the solution is priced low.

There is a one-time purchase to use this solution.

I rate the price of Proxmox VE a seven out of ten.

I rate Proxmox VE an eight out of ten.

I use Proxmox VE to host a domain control environment, a Windows server environment, and to host a few apps that I publish on the store. I'm also using it to manage clients' remote surveillance backups because I keep my clients' CCTV footage.

I set up an NVR environment, and I'm pushing traffic to my servers. I'm running a mini data center. It's doing apps. It's doing Windows Server Management for a normal environment. It's nothing fancy, but it's working.

I like that it's secure, and I find its Software RAID very useful. It's way better than the Hardware RAID I was used to. I'm really impressed by their Software RAID feature. 

Backup and recovery could be better. It's a bit problematic. If you're not well-versed with Linux, it tends to be a bit of a challenge when setting up and recovering. It's not really GUI-based, and if you're not a good Linux user, it becomes a bit difficult.

In the next release, I would like to have something like Hyper-V's Data Protection Manager, where you could do an offsite backup and keep a copy. I haven't seen that incorporated yet, but I'm sure they will do that.

I have been using Proxmox VE for more than five years.

Proxmox VE is a stable solution. I don't have that much money to buy new hardware or new servers, and I have more or less deployed it on the old used servers I purchased online. It's been a breeze. Until I make money to buy the high-end servers, I'm just purchasing used servers or end-of-life servers, and they're running. For a third-world set up, they're running well. For 25-plus years, it's been a good solution for me.

Proxmox VE is a scalable solution. When I get a new host or a new client, I'll probably buy a new server and add it to the node or the cluster. It's just a breeze. It's as simple as a click, and I have added it. 

I have about 20 clients. My clients are about seven schools, gas stations, coal, utilities, a bank, two small microfinance banks, and the government.

I am thinking of doing more. I am thinking of setting up a mini data center with it because we have done the proof of concept for CCTV storage. People don't have the space or the money to do their own backup and store their own footage. Part of my solution is selling them storage that they can retrieve from their devices. I store their CCTV data in my data center and give them a remote view. You don't need to have an NVR.

When I sell a surveillance solution, you don't even have to have an NVR. Give me a firewall, and then I will point your storage to come to my server. I'm the one in the neighborhood storing information at the moment.

The forums have everything you need. I haven't had any challenges because the forums are there. I have yet to get the paid subscription support. I have yet to find an installation that has given me a challenge that I can only resolve by subscribing for support.

I was using Hyper-V from VMware, but Microsoft kept crashing. It takes a lot of investment here in Africa. I need to invest a lot in power because master machines crash. Windows and power are not the best of mates. After that, I moved to Huawei Desktop Protocol and Huawei Desktop Cloud. That also had issues with the support and licenses. Then we moved to Proxmox, and it's been working.

The initial setup is straightforward. It was hard at first, but I went over the forums. After I went over the forums, I did the YouTube tutorials and videos, and after that, I managed my clients well without paying for a bit of support. Surprisingly, I have been running for about five years.

It doesn't take hours because I've deployed on two nodes, and I've deployed on three nodes. Currently, I'm running it on four nodes, and it's doing great. So, with every installation, I tend to get better.

On a scale from one to five, I would give my initial setup experience a four.

I had some support. I've got over 12 years of experience working with Twitter, Uganda. Now Twitter, Uganda is a multinational, and the rest of the group supports the partners. I've had a bit of guidance when it comes to switching, routing, storage, and databases. 

When I went out on my own, I used that background knowledge and the background skills I obtained through the years, and they helped me out. I didn't have any outside tech support to help. The tutorials were there, and the videos were available on YouTube.

I have a guy who does the power because he's got to stabilize the servers. Then I've got a guy who does the networking. He gives me the IP. He gives me the ports to connect. Then I have the guys who do the installation on-site, especially the Windows servers. I also have the Linux guys. It's a team of about four people. The rest are juniors or what we call apprentices. They help out here. I mostly use students to get the work done.

I'm definitely getting a return on my investment. I'm buying used servers, and I'm charging like I was charging for new servers, and I'm making a good profit on them. I'm repurposing servers, and I'm making a lot of money from repurposed servers using Proxmox, and they're running.

On a scale from one to five, I would rate my ROI at three.

Proxmox VE is affordable. It's cheaper than Hyper-V, Huawei Desktop Protocol, and Huawei Desktop Cloud.

I made a comparison with Hyper-V and Huawei. I bought Proxmox because it's cheaper and more resilient to our power environment. We have very unstable power in the country, so Hyper-V and sudden breaches in power were problematic.

I would tell potential clients about the ease of use. What's quite surprising is that Microsoft is going that way now, but these guys had that solution there back in the day.

Microsoft is doing Software RAID with Server 2019. These guys already had that solution back in that day. They're doing cloud spaces, but Linux had SAFE back in the day. 

I'll tell them it's a cheap option. It's a stable option. I know Microsoft has done a lot in trying to get stable, but it's an affordable option. It's a stable solution, and it just works off the fly like that. 

You watch the video, use a storage guy, have a power guy, and have a good networking guy. You could get the service up and running compared to having a Microsoft MVP somewhere in a corner or on-call somewhere.

The releases are killing us. It's like they keep releasing every year. I would wish for them to come with something very stable. They keep coming up with something new every six months because I think their release cycle is every six months. I'm trying to finish something, and they release something new altogether, and I have to migrate. I know the iterations are as minimal as possible, but it still has an impact.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give  Proxmox VE a seven.

At the moment, it's used for the virtualization of everything within my test environment.

I'm not using the newest version of Proxmox.

It brings all those benefits that virtualization brings. It reduces cost. I don't have to invest so much in buying many servers. I can go buy one new server with enough resources, and I can virtualize using that server. I can also layer features, such as routing, firewall, HTTP, and VLANs, on top of that.

In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable.

Its user interface can be improved. In the version that I am using, not all functions can be performed by using the UI. There can be some improvement on that. I'm assuming that it has already been improved in the latest version.

I have been using this solution for the past three years or so.

It has been absolutely wonderful in terms of reliability and performance.

I see the options for scalability, but for my own use case, I don't have the need to have several instances. It is just for my test environment, but the options that they provide sound interesting. There are some high availability configurations for multiple Proxmox instances.

My environment has about 30 users. It is being used every day. It is an operational tool because the environment has to be up.

The way the licensing is structured is that you have to pay for the support. My use case is just for my test environment. I have not deployed it on production, so I've not had any need for technical support.

I've worked in environments where other solutions, such as VMware, have been used, but personally, I have not used any other solution. This is the first solution I am using as far as virtualization is concerned.

For me, it was straightforward. There are different user levels for things like this, but it was straightforward for me. It takes about a day or two.

I implemented it myself. For its deployment and maintenance, you need a minimum of one and a maximum of two people. The second person is for backup reasons when the primary resource is not available.

I have absolutely seen an ROI. I am not able to measure the actual value in terms of returns, but because I've invested nothing, apart from the cost of the server or the hypervisor upon which the Proxmox is installed, the value that we've got from it has been huge.

The way the licensing of Proxmox is structured, you can use it for free. It is an open-source solution, and you can use it for free, but if you do need support, then you have to pay for the support. So, you can use it in a way that you don't have to pay anything, which is a plus point for me. For people or users who have huge and more intense use cases, the advice or the recommendation is to always pay for support. In case something goes wrong, you can fall back on the team that will attend to your request. For me, at the moment, the cost is zero.

I would advise that you weigh your use cases very well before deciding whether to use Proxmox or not. It meets the needs of my use case, and I don't have any reason to complain. If there is a switch or change in my use case, I might decide to not use Proxmox. I might consider some other solution.

If you want to run Proxmox without paying for support, like any open-source solution, you have to read the documentation and be familiar with all the dependencies and requirements for your environment. Once you have all of that covered, you are good.

I would rate it a nine out of 10.

With Proxmox, we use the hypervisor of Proxmox and Proxmox backups. In VMware, I see all the production, like vSphere, vCenter, vRealize Operations Manager, vSAN, Workspace ONE, and VMware Horizon. Right now we are working with NSX. 

For VMware, as a partner, I have many cases of vSAN as a hyperconvergence solution. This solution is very popular in my country, mostly with banks. There are many solutions that we have implemented and that are very successful. Horizon is another solution that is highly requested by clients. Because of the pandemic, the VDI and Remote Desktop are often requested from our clients. Those two are very good solutions. From my experience, I don't have many problems with them.

Proxmox is free, very stable, and doesn't require more resources for memory RAM. It's fine for a small data center.

One issue with Proxmox is that some processes are not automatic. For some processes, you have to do it manually by command line. I don't know about the last version of Proxmox, but I had that problem with this version.

I've been using this solution for one year. In my last job I was a final client, so I worked with vSphere and the vCenter. I did a migration from vSphere to Proxmox, and I was in charge of this infrastructure using Proxmox. I am working for a partner of the VMware product as a presale VMware specialist.

Most implementations are on-premise. We really don't have implementation on cloud. I'm from Bolivia, and we recently have been introducing on-cloud solutions, but most of the solutions are on-premises.

Proxmox is very stable.

For deployment, we used eight blade servers.

Proxmox is is free.

I've worked with VMware, vSphere, vCenter, and vRealize Operations Manager. VSphere works perfectly. The enterprise version is very complete, and you get almost everything you need in data center.

I would rate Proxmox VE 7 out of 10.