Proxmox VE Reviews

The solution is used for virtualization, web servers, databases, and S3 storage spaces.

The most valuable feature is that the solution is free of cost.

The solution can be improved by making it more secure and scalable.

I have been using the solution for several years.

The solution is stable. I have not had any issues in the last two years.

The solution is only one node, so it is not scalable.

The initial setup is straightforward.

There is no subscription required for Proxmox VE.

I give the solution an eight out of ten.

We require 15 people for the deployment and maintenance of the solution including two developers.

We have around 400 web visitors that are supported by the solution per day.

We have two environments. We run one with Proxmox VE and the other with VMware.

I recommend the solution to others.

The most valuable feature of Proxmox VE is the linked clone.

The solution is not good at upgrading and this is why I using version 6.2 and not version 7. There is no easy way to implement the upgrade. I don't have enough experience to do it safely.

I have been using Proxmox VE for approximately two years.

Proxmox VE is highly stable.

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

The solution can scale but it is not perfect.

We use this solution in the branch office in Beijing. We have approximately 25 people in the office and 15 of them will use something built on Proxmox VE.

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

I have not used the support from Proxmox VE.

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

It's straightforward to get started with Proxmox VE, but if you want to do something more advanced, it can become complex. The installation process is simple as long as you set up the cluster correctly. Setting up the cluster is straightforward, but when you try to do something more advanced, the complexity increases significantly.

We are using the free community version of Proxmox VE.

We evaluated VMware ESXi and oVirt from Red Hat before choosing Proxmox VE.

Proxmox VE and VMware ESXi are great options for beginners. I have some experience with Linux, which is sufficient for setting up the Proxmox VE environment and VMware ESXi. These two solutions are ideal choices for a small office.

I rate Proxmox VE a nine out of ten.

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. 

We primarily use the solution for general virtualization for all sorts of services. 

The out-of-the-box functionality is great for containers. 

You can easily migrate VMs between hosts.

The hyper-converged solution with the CEPH cluster is very nice. 

It is stable. 

The solution can scale very well.

The deployment is fast and easy.

The compatibility with non-English operating systems needs to be improved. If there is a non-English operating system, we run into issues.

We'd like to be able to replicate on the same data. 

I used the solution for about a year. 

The stability is good. We haven't had any stability issues. It does not crash or freeze. 

It's extremely scalable. I'd rate the ability to extend ten out of ten. 

We have about 25 users on the solution right now. We will increase usage in the future. 

Support is a paid service. 

We've also used Hyper-V and VMware. We switched based on cost and functionality.

It is very easy to implement. I'd rate it ten out of ten in terms of ease of setup. 

The deployment itself only takes an hour.

I handled the setup in-house without the help of an outside vendor.

The solution is pretty affordable. It costs less than Hyper-V and VMware. If you want to have support from the vendor, you need to buy a subscription. 

We have been using the latest version of the solution. 

We are an IT company and selling it to customers. 

I'd advise others to just do enough planning before they deploy so everything is ready so that the system runs smoothly.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

We use the open-source version of Proxmox for automation and other uses, including LXC containers. We use it for my enterprise applications and to offer our hosted cloud-services.

Proxmox with Ceph Storage as HCI has given really peace of mind to Management & IT for regular hardware maintenance, with near to zero downtime or no downtime for most of VM & LXC container keeping in mind service running round-the-clock for customer.

The feature that I have found most valuable is that its storage ZFS & Ceph, container based on LXC and everything else works out of the box. Additionally, it is a really stable, reliable, and scalable solution.

They have a good road map already in place, so I don't think there are any immediate challenges.

I don't have any real challenges about improvement here. (As most IT required features are included and they do have roadmap). Plus API & Command tool is lot helpful.

I personally keep exploring other players and backup/Restore/DR software.

And believe more advance features of backup/restore & DR Data Sync for Ceph  on GUI fronted would be added benefits for users coming from other platform.

On Security/Firewall/Software-Defined-Switch with more advance feature on webGUI would be also more helpful too.

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

Proxmox VE is an enterprise solution, it is used daily. Its regular maintenance is normal, the way you would maintain any normal infrastructure. There is nothing special or complex with it. We have a team of five people who maintain it, but there aren't any complex challenges.

My company is very small but I have more than 10,000 users accessing on ProxmoxVE Cluster. We provide the solution to other customers.

The thing about this solution is that is so stable I hardly need any technical support.

We used Raw Linux Virt-manger for per Server management for VM & LXC before, without any central management.

Everything has a learning curve, steps to watch, understand and explore. But with Proxmox there are hardly any challenges. I don't think the deployment took more than an hour.

Its was inhouse.

License & Support-subscription & running maintenance cost is bear minimum compare to other closed source solutions. We were able to use our other existing commodity server part of this cluster.

Recently, I have been a Proxmox reseller. I wanted to promote it in India because there is no reseller here. We are trying to promote Proxmox here because being open source it's not popular worldwide, although we have been using it in production for the last more than five or six years. We have been exploring Proxmox for small applications for more than seven, eight years.

Tried Xen, but was not comfortable.

With Proxmox VE you get everything in one box, including the ZFS & Ceph storage & LXC container technology. 

Even the support subscription is really good.

It's a wonderful open-source solution. It's out-of-the-box and it is easy to learn compared to other vendors. It is easy to deploy and maintain and you hardly have any trouble or challenges from the software. 

It provides peace of mind for management.

On a scale from one to ten, I would rate Proxmox VE a nine.

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

Proxmox creates an environment for writing script and virtualizing. I'm the senior finance administrator and I work in a research department in the health arena. 

The product is cost-effective to virtualize because of the ability to always create VMs. It allows us to create an individual virtual machine along with the GPU for machine learning. We can create multiple NPI notes, and whenever they need it, we can just power some down and bring them out. The solution is open source which is great for us and it's very reliable. Proxmox has given us the ability to do what a commercial organization can do but it's free. You don't have to buy any hardware. If you do take a subscription, they provide support. It's a good model.

The process for deployment is complicated and can be quite difficult for some; there's a steep learning curve if you've never dealt with the product before. 

We've used this solution for a couple of years. 

Stability is good, the solution functions well. 

Scalability is good, we have around 100 users. 

The initial setup is easy for me, because I'm very familiar with this product. Deployment takes an hour or two. 

The subscription version is not expensive but we don't always have the money to pay it. In that respect, both Netgear and Proxmox have been very important to us. 

This solution is accessible to anyone. It does take time to learn and experiment with it. I rate this product nine out of 10. 

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.