Proxmox VE Reviews

We use this solution for our file servers. Most of the applications are file servers and some are employed as web servers for internal applications that we use.

Most of what we use is for file servers and for some internal web server applications for local use. 

It is easy to deploy.

We are using servers individually, and we are looking for a reliable application that allows us to hop between servers with high availability. It is one of our primary goals to have a hyper-converged solution. With the high availability, we can make some hop-switch deployment teams between our servers.

It could be more user-friendly with the configuration.

We have been using Proxmox VE for almost one year.

We are using Version 6.3.

We have no issues with the stability of Proxmox Ve.

Proxmox VE is a scalable solution, but we are not necessarily interested in expanding our usage. We want to make some changes to something that is more reliable.

We have no support from Proxmox VE. Our support is from the internet. It would be helpful to have some support included.

The initial setup is easy and straightforward. We set it up locally.

Our team does the configurations.

It takes a couple of days to deploy.

We are looking for another Hypervisor similar to VMware.

Proxmox VE is a great solution for small enterprises for small businesses. I'll recommend it just for that use.

I would rate Proxmox VE an eight out of ten.

We sell Proxmox VE solutions to our customers. The workload to help our customers may be the biggest use case to be on the cloud. We use a bunch of statuses, and different ways to deliver databases, and SQL Servers. So, that's the natural way we use the platform on the cloud.

It has a good performance and you can cluster it.

It's more about the clusters. The clusters are pretty much good and have a high performance and impact.

For now, we're planning to migrate to another solution because there seems to be a lot of backups that we have set up. We have reviewed Proxmox VE but we want to focus more on our customers. In fact, we have already finished our first deployment and we will receive more features that will go to the cloud.

I have been using Proxmox VE for the past five years.

You don't have to be very observant. We have maybe three times the hard one, but it seems as if this is an open-source solution that is supported by the community, and it's okay.

If you feel you have the skills to do it, you can go hands-on by yourself to do these deliveries, and it's going to be very useful for the solution. You need to have the training and the right skills.

For now, we are pretty much working on that, but I think someday, we will make it solve another class from our class which is very good because we have an installation. If you start from the beginning, it's the third one, maybe you have the profile, so you will deploy it in maybe four days.

So it's what you have to like to go there, but it can work because if you have some problems, you have that resource to go and I found things they will need. They will keep you updated and will help you a lot. So if you ask me, their service is good. The community forum is very technical, and they're quick to respond when they are messaged.

The setup is very easy, but the problem is when you have to customize the solution they're talking about more episodes. You have to be more hands-on to have a very good draft, it will be more helpful to have a very good delivery.

For the price, performance is going to be the first takeaway we can offer to our customers.

It's one of those things for me to move things on to the cloud. It's not so easy. I am always on the laptop and have to monitor that because if you want to make strides; you need to stay online. Though we intend to go with a third party to look for another solution, we hope they will fix that in the next release.

The work panel is very good for intake. It's very easy to use and you can scale from other areas which is not a very technical way, so you can use them, including the panel. They can manage their integrated solutions, and that's very good because it's the thing that you want to scale. If the customer wants to operate a downgrade and do something with Proxmox VE, that is what will take you there. You can integrate Proxmox VE with other solutions. Proxmox VE is one thing if you want to start with cloud deployment.

We have many use cases for this solution, including electric services. 

We are happy with Proxmox VE. We use it as part of a cluster. The solution has a very good user interface and price. 

I had a few problems regarding instability.

One additional feature that could be beneficial is application storage. 

I have been using the solution for two years. 

When it comes to scalability, I am satisfied with Proxmox. I got everything that I needed with Proxmox. Currently, my team consists of 15 people but we have 1,000 clients.

We migrated our old servers with Proxmox VE. 

The initial setup was simple. Deployment took us several weeks. 

We do not have any licensing costs. 

We did not evaluate other options. We tried out Proxmox VE two years ago and have been using it since. 

I recommend the main features of this solution considering its price. The only disadvantage of Proxmox VE is that it is a young solution so it does have some bugs.

We use the solution to host virtual machines, such as: SQL Server Database, Active directory domain services, web services, general cloud applications, and some virtual machines or containers for development and testing purpose. Specially the preference for containers is due to the easly development when the only basic operational system is required istead of fully hardware virtualization (kvm).

We heavly use replication resource to assign some garantine to critical virtual machines wich could run eventually on other sites or hosts, in case of broken internet links, hardware issues or even hacker attacks (many thanks to ZFS working with PVE-ZSync feature that allow planning a standback period of retention snapshots, quickly failover and fallback of virtual machine storage)

It is high availability resources, replication and live-migration (on cluster envirioment). We don't have significant problems with hardware issue or maintenance schedule, because with ZFS, Cephs or other shared storage incorporated in Proxmox technology, it´s possible to migrate virtual machines to other hosts with almost zero downtime.

1) The two-factor authentication: for security reasons!

2) PVE-Zsync: wich allows replication outside clusters, with snapshot retention for quickly failover and failback (by incremental syncs)

3) Large documentation and "How-To" on the wiki page;

4) Many usefull integration: APIs, Active Directory;

5) ACLS, Groups e User Managment: Allows to set and customize permissions.

6) Proxmox Backup Server: Assertive Incrememtal Backup Solution for realible local backups or remote with encryption support! That's perfect.

7) Built on Debian based Kernel, very stable distro

1) PVE-Zsync GUI implementation - This is a very important tool, it could delivery the more advantage in comparision to Xen Orchestra and Microsoft Virtual Machine Replica Service.

2) Central Cluster Administration: The possibility to manage many clusters sites in "one only page" instead of oppening many browsers tabs! IT Cloud companies as us, usually need to access diferent clusters sites, I think it's good idea to centralize the administration GUI for companies that own two or more cluster sites!

3) In connection with my suggestion number 2, the possibility to create a "farm cluster". In few words, the possibility to move virtual machines (live or not) among diferents clusters sites separated by WAN links. Actually, PVE Cluster is realible on local links, due to multicast or udp rings, but in some scenarios when a entire cluster site needs to be put offline (eg, for maintenance or internet issues), a virtua machine migration to other cluster that belongs to the same "farm" but in other region will increase the "value" of Proxmox simular to Microsoft Azure Site Recovery ou Amazon. That will make my evaluation increase from 8 to 9 or even 10!

Since 2014

The technical support is the very complete. I don't  have a subscription, because the support that we need for our applications and solution are available on the Proxmox Wiki However, for big companies we recomend the Proxmox subscription for getting a first class support and best pratices.

Microsoft Hyper-V on situation thats requires Outside Migration (see my comment 3 on the question: what areas could the product or service be improved)

The solution is very easy to set up and implement. It's not complex. We can put a single host or even a Cluster only line in less than one hour! 

Not yet!

Proxmox delivery more cost X Benefits in comparision to VMWare and Citrix Xen. It could be improved in future for more benefits in comparison to XCP-NG and  Microsoft Hyper-V

Citrix Xen-Server and XCP-NG

We use it wherever we need virtualization.

It fits in well with our organization. It works and does what it says it does.

Its performance and support can be improved. Currently, there is a cost for support.

We've been using this solution for probably two years now.

We are satisfied with the stability of the solution.

It leads itself well for scaling out. It is being used on almost all of our servers here. We have 46 users, and everyone who works here uses this solution.

I didn't contact them.

Before Proxmox, we used Zend Server.

The initial setup was fairly straightforward. The initial deployment probably took two hours.

We implemented it through an in-house team. We have two staff members for its deployment and maintenance. Their roles are IT Manager and Assistant IT Manager.

I'm sure there was or is an ROI, but I don't really get to see that end of the operation.

I am not aware of the licensing cost, but there is a cost for support.

We tried VMware and decided to go with Proxmox VE. The cost was the key factor.

I would highly recommend this solution. I would rate Proxmox VE a nine out of ten.

There are a number of services that we need, such as a dedicated phone system and an Active Directory server, that we run in a virtualized environment. Doing so means that we don't need to use dedicated hardware for them.

This is a low-use, but a high-need solution for us. It is helpful because it means that we don't need dedicated hardware for all of our services. It has allowed us to grow the way we have, over the past couple of years.

The most valuable feature is the ease of deployment.

For the most part, it is quite user-friendly.

The interface can be a little bit rough in places. There are some things that need to be done using the command-line interface, and these should be moved into the web-based interface. There are also aspects related to storage that are difficult to do with the interface.

We have been using Proxmox for between two and three years.

We have had absolutely no problems with stability.

Scalability is excellent and it seems to run with quite a low overhead.

I have been experimenting with adding nodes to the cluster so that we can create more of a high-availability system. The process is just a matter of installing the software and then copying and pasting the license key. It couldn't be easier.

I have not had problems that necessitated contacting technical support.

I did not use a similar solution prior to implementing Proxmox.

The initial setup is easy.

I am the person who is responsible for configuring and maintaining Proxmox.

This is a product that I recommend trying. There are others that are bigger and better, albeit priced accordingly. This should definitely be tried and put through its paces.

Overall, this is a good product, although there is always room for improvement.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

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.  

This is a free version of VMware and that's why we're using it. It does everything that VMware can do and it's more flexible. We were looking for a virtual solution and we're a startup, so the cheapest is best. We are customers of Proxmox and I'm the technology operations manager. 

The feature I like best about this product is the fact that they have independent nodes. Proxmox is based on KVM and essentially you could lose a node. All the hosts that are running are evacuated elsewhere in the cluster and away you go. I have reduced infrastructure and I'm familiar with it because at the heart of the hypervisor is Debian Linux and I'm a Linux administrator. It didn't require learning a whole new platform and it's so easy to use. Proxmox will be in my toolbox forever, I love it.

This is a really great solution and the more VMware raises their costs, the more appealing it is. I'd be very nervous if I were one of the big companies because you're going to have administrators like myself discovering Proxmox and the cost is zero. With this solution, when something goes wrong, you Google it, you figure out the problem and fix it. Of course if you're an enterprise company, that's something else.

The product should have more enterprise features, perhaps DRS. I don't think Proxmox has the ability to sense that a host is running hot and needs to be evacuated. So DRS, dynamic resource scheduling, is a feature that constantly monitors the host and if it sees a particular host taking up a lot of resources, it will take that host off and throw it on a different host in the cluster that's not running as hot and doesn't have as much utilization. It protects the overall cluster 

As above, I think the DRS would be a helpful additional feature.

I've been using this solution for six months. 

As long as you're monitoring your host yourself, it's a stable solution. 

I can't really speak to the scalability. I haven't looked into it yet. We're a very small company and we have about five people using the solution, all at the director or senior level. We have a senior application developer, and a director level manager who brought the product in.

Does a three and a half minute setup sound reasonable to you? When I first installed it, I thought there must be more to it. I downloaded the ISO onto a thumb drive and made it bootable. Then you boot the server, boot off the thumb drive. You have to answer about six questions and that's it. Very simple. 

My only recommendation to anyone thinking of implementing this solution is to read up on it, but give it some serious consideration because it really is a great product. In other words, don't let the freeware label scare you off.

I would rate this solution a seven out of 10.