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> Proxmox was considered, but didn't make it into my final proposal due to prior evaluations not finding it Enterprise-suitable. What makes something Enterpris

• stego-tech 2y ago
  That’s a great question. To clarify, Enterprises will use whatever works for them regardless of its intended use case or “fit”. In the case of Proxmox, I believe at the time it was its insistence on operating exclusively in a privileged space (root, by default) that was also incompatible with corporate security standards and single sign-on. In other words, we couldn’t effectively secure its default accounts and operation to our satisfaction. When the dated and overly-technical UX is taken into account (including it defaulting to legacy-compatible options), its weird cluster configs if you wanted centralized control, and its…unique tagging and ID systems, and ultimately it’s a heavier lift to implement than other alternatives with no real advantage of its own. I don’t doubt there’s some Wizard out there gladly running it across continents and supporting tens of thousands of VMs and containers, but for a transition project from VMware it just wasn’t remotely competitive in my research. Great for SMBs and homelabs though, if you don’t want to learn KVM directly or fire up Cockpit.
  • rstuart4133 2y ago
    > In the case of Proxmox, I believe at the time it was its insistence on operating exclusively in a privileged space (root, by default) that was also incompatible with corporate security standards and single sign-on. I've not used ProxMox so I don't know how well it does on that front, but I can believe it. My recent experience is "if you don't check these security boxes we will drop your product". That said, DOM0's have to run high privilege level. Maybe you are saying ProxMox doesn't offer logins with different levels of access.
    • stego-tech 2y ago
      > Maybe you are saying ProxMox doesn't offer logins with different levels of access. No, it does. Hm, let me see if I can phrase this better. In VMware, there’s two “stock” accounts that come with the product and function out of the box: admin/administrator@vsphere.local (depending on the product line) and root. I can set the passwords on both, and then I can go a step further by restricting their use on given appliances - such as keeping admin live for maintenance, but only permitting root login via the console. Better yet for security, I can make root unusable without affecting upgrades and critical functionality, requiring an appliance reset via bootloader to recover it. In fact, it’s entirely possible to deploy and secure many VMware appliances without touching root once. I cannot do that with Proxmox. Everything important for routine maintenance of the hypervisor requires root. Yes, I can make a new privileged account and use that for day-to-day instead, but ultimately root still has to exist and be usable at all times. Worse, Proxmox lacks the basic tools in its deployment image to manage system-level accounts and escalated privilege access (like sudo), meaning additional basic configuration is needed to get it to a minimally acceptable security standard in 2024. In an era where engineers like myself are demanding secure by default software, Proxmox is far from that standard. I hope that clears things up!
      • rstuart4133 2y ago
        Indeed it does clear things up. Thanks.