As you all might be aware VMware is hiking prices again. (Surprise to no one)
Right now Hyper-V seems to be the most popular choice and Proxmox appears to be the runner up. Hyper-V is probably the best for Windows shops but my concern is that it will just become Azure tied at some point. I could be wrong but somehow I don’t trust Microsoft to not screw everyone over. They already deprecated WSUS which is a pretty popular tool for Windows environments.
Proxmox seems to be a great alternative that many people are jumping on. It is still missing some bigger features but things like the data center manager are in the pipeline. However, I think many people (especially VMware admins) are fundamentally misunderstanding it.
Proxmox is not that unique and is built on Foss. You could probably put together a Proxmox like system without completely being over your head. It is just KVM libvirt/qemu and corosync along with some other stuff like ZFS.
What Proxmox does provide is convenience and reliability. It takes time to make a system and you are responsible when things go wrong. Doing the DIY method is a good exercise but not something you want to run in prod unless you have the proper staff and skillset.
And there is where the problem lies. There are companies are coming from a Windows/point in click background who don’t have staff that understand Linux. Proxmox is just Debian under the hood so it is vulnerable to all the same issues. You can install updates with the GUI but if you don’t understand how Linux packaging works you may end up with a situation where you blow off your own foot. Same goes for networking and filesystems. To effectively maintain a Proxmox environment you need expertise. Proxmox makes it very easy to switch to cowboy mode and break the system. It is very flexible but you must be very wary of making changes to the hypervisor as that’s the foundation for everything else.
I personally wish Proxmox would serious consider a immutable architecture. TrueNAS already does this and it would be nice to have a solid update system. They would do a stand alone OS image or they could use something based on OStree. Maybe even build in a update manager that can update each node and check the health.
Just my thoughts
Running on Debian is pretty close to immutable, as long as you don’t do anything silly with the underlying OS besides run Vanilla proxmox. Reinstalling Proxmox and restore /etc/pve is as hard as it gets, and if you get really fancy you can install the PBS client right on the nodes and back them up fully to the same place you backup the guests.
I’ve used Proxmox for years now (used to mod the reddit /r/proxmox sub along with Jim Salter) and I would be comfortable running it in enterprise in anger. As a former VCP, I appreciate the transparency of Proxmox, and like you say, it’s really just an amalgamation of standard services with a nice front end and a bunch of automation in the background that you can tear into if you need to.
And Proxmox Backup Server is everything I ever wanted in a backup system for it, I’d put it head to head with Veeam and other VMWare solutions.
Promox is not immutable. Immutable Linux uses a read only filesystem. They normally have automatic role backs and updates usually take the form of deltas. (Not always)
The benefit is that the system is highly predicable and updates only apply on a reboot. If there is a bad update it just fails the self test and then rolls back. This is way more dynamic than stock Debian.
I think you might be confusing stability with immutably
Of course I realize that. But Debian is perfectly fine as a base for proxmox because of its stability, and if you aren’t doing silly things like installing docker on the host, its not going to be an issue.
It can be though if you start messing around. For instance I had an issue with a newer kernel so I downgraded only to find that it wouldn’t boot. (ZFS can be upgraded but not downgraded)
I guess the big takeaway is don’t shoot yourself in the foot