Proxmox VE and VMware ESXi compete in the virtualization and containerization category, with VMware ESXi often having the upper hand due to its high availability and robust integration capabilities, despite requiring more investment.
Features: Proxmox VE provides a streamlined installation adaptable to various hardware, allowing virtualization and containerization with live migration, snapshotting, and support for multiple storage options, while being open-source with broad community support. VMware ESXi delivers high availability and extensive integration capabilities and reliability, though it generally requires specific hardware configurations.
Room for Improvement: Proxmox VE could improve MS Windows performance, USB handling, macOS support, simplify certain GUI elements, and enhance documentation clarity. VMware ESXi's main issues revolve around pricing and licensing complexities following the Broadcom acquisition and could benefit from improving technical support and easing cloud integration.
Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Proxmox VE is noted for straightforward deployment on diverse hardware environments and extensive community support, though official support is paid, which may limit some users. VMware ESXi offers reliable deployment across hybrid and cloud environments but has mixed reviews on technical support, affected by recent changes in pricing and service structures.
Pricing and ROI: Proxmox VE is highly cost-effective as open-source software with optional paid support, promising quick ROI suited for budget-sensitive operations. VMware ESXi, despite offering a rich feature set, is seen as expensive due to complex pricing models, negatively affecting ROI, particularly after changes post-Broadcom acquisition.
I rate the technical support from VMware as nine or ten out of ten.
In the last three or four years, we did not require any support from VMware engineers, indicating its high reliability.
We are not receiving the response very fast from support, so we have to wait a lot.
The solution is scalable, allowing us to scale up or down regardless of infrastructure size.
My customers are highly satisfied with its scalability.
vCenter Server can manage up to 1,000 ESXi servers within a single UI interface, allowing extensive deployment and management capabilities.
ESXi is stable, and our business operations depend on it year after year.
The cost of VMware ESXi is very high, especially after the acquisition by Broadcom, which led to price increases.
It's not cost-effective for small users and creates a gap for alternatives, while favoring larger clients.
Providing a mobile application for remote access to ESXi servers would be beneficial.
The product is very cost-effective, though not fixed, as pricing tends to fluctuate over time.
The pricing is expensive, with the cost for customers ranging from $10,000 to $20,000 yearly.
VMware is shifting to Broadcom, and their prices are becoming more expensive nowadays.
As a level one or bare metal hypervisor, its unmatched scalability depends on underlying hardware, capable of managing large numbers of physical servers with one management platform.
Its capability to move virtual machines to physical machines is very efficient for our live environment.
Features like high availability ensure VM migration to another host in case of host failure.
Proxmox VE is a complete virtualization management solution for servers. It is a powerful open-source platform and supports two virtualization technologies - KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for virtual machines and LXC for containers. Proxmox VE has a central user interface that allows you to manage not only VMs and containers, but also storage resources, network configuration, and high availability for clusters. It is enterprise-ready and is valued for its scalability and maximum flexibility, enabling you to virtualize very demanding workloads. Proxmox VE makes it possible for you to easily install, manage, and monitor hyper-converged (HCI) data centers.
Proxmox VE Key Features
The Proxmox VE platform has many powerful features, including:
pen-source software, high-available clusters, command line, fencing, a web-based management interface, flexible storage options, REST API, live/online migration, storage replication stack, software defined storage, virtualized networking, backup and restore, two-factor authentication, role-based administration, and VM templates and clones.
Proxmox VE Benefits
Some of the biggest benefits of Proxmox VE are:
Reviews From Real Users
Here is some feedback from some of our users who are currently using the solution:
A PeerSpot user who is a director at a tech services company says, “The most valuable features of Proxmox VE are the ease of containerization. Overall the solution is generic, feature-rich, and has compatibility.”
Another PeerSpot user who is a head of IT operations at a tech services company mentions that "In addition to the virtualization, the firewall and the routing functions that it provides are valuable."
Deepen D., director and CTO at TechnoInfotech, expresses that "The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage container, LVM, and everything else work out of the box."
VMware ESXi serves as a hypervisor enabling virtualization by transforming physical servers into virtual infrastructures, supporting efficient server management, development, and production environments.
Organizations utilize VMware ESXi for its high availability and ability to host diverse workloads effectively. Known for stability and maturity, it efficiently handles server, networking, and storage demands, with integral features like vMotion and memory compression. ESXi integrates well with data center operations, allowing seamless resource allocation and virtual machine migration. Despite impressive capabilities, users encounter challenges with setup complexity, licensing costs, and technical support delays, leading some to explore different solutions.
What are the main features of VMware ESXi?Industries deploying VMware ESXi benefit in sectors requiring robust IT infrastructure, including finance, healthcare, and education. Its capability to support high availability and diverse workloads proves essential for critical applications, enhancing productivity and agility in dynamic environments.
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