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If I were building a datacenter today I would go with proxmox. It's "just debian" under the hood and can be customized and controlled a multitude of ways (UI, C

If I were building a datacenter today I would go with proxmox. It's "just debian" under the hood and can be customized and controlled a multitude of ways (UI, CLI on the box, Terraform, API, etc)

throw0101c 2y ago
> If I were building a datacenter today I would go with proxmox. I use Proxmox as well in a small-ish deployment, but have also heard good things with Xcp-ng. At a previous job used OpenStack.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
NexRebular 2y ago
Or if you'd like to help preventing linux monoculturalization of datacenters, MNX Triton or vanilla SmartOS are very good options too.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
  My impression, strengthened by https://wiki.smartos.org/managing-instances-with-vmamd/#using-vmadm-sendreceive https://wiki.smartos.org/managing-instances-with-vmamd/#usin... , is that SmartOS preferentially operates at the per-host scale, which is probably a disadvantage in a datacenter setting. (I don't know enough about MNX Triton to comment)
- whalesalad 2y ago
  The cool thing about proxmox is that it is - again - "just debian" so there is really no vendor lock-in. Yes they do have commercial support/update subscriptions but the community offering is open (https://github.com/proxmox https://github.com/proxmox). So I do not worry too much about lock-in or monoculturalization. At the end of the day it is a wrapper around fundamental components of Linux. They do not have any proprietary secret sauce that would F you down the road. Correction I see now that the projects you reference are Solaris based. I am down with that cause too - but if you are a BSD/Solaris shop expect to do a lot of things on your own. The linux virtualization space is substantially larger (not necessarily suggesting it is better...)
  - jclulow 2y ago
    As an aside: Solaris is something you can buy from Oracle, which they forked from OpenSolaris 15 years ago. SmartOS is a distribution of illumos, which also forked from the same code 15 years ago. They have since diverged, in some areas dramatically, so we (the illumos community) don't bill ourselves as being Solaris based.
zozbot234 2y ago
Doesn't Proxmox use a separate kernel package compared to Debian? That's kinda annoying because it ends up making the distro a 'Frankendebian' at best. Even using an up-to-date kernel from the stable backports repositories is a lot better than that.
- brirec 2y ago
  They use a slightly modified Ubuntu kernel (https://github.com/proxmox/pve-kernel https://github.com/proxmox/pve-kernel), with things like ZFS added. They also really are good about using proper Debian tooling, and so their kernel doesn’t cause any weird dependency issues. Right now they install proxmox-kerne-6.8.12-6 by default (using pseudo-packages called proxmox-default-kernel and proxmox-kernel-6.8 pointing at it), and offer proxmox-kernel-6.11.0-2 as an opt-in package (by installing proxmox-kernel-6.11) I’ve been using the latest opt-in kernels on all of my Proxmox nodes for a few years now, and I’ve never had any issues at all with that myself.
  - zozbot234 2y ago
    > things like ZFS added That's a big gotcha - ZFS is non-free so of course it cannot be part of Debian proper. Hopefully we'll get feature parity via Btrfs or Bcachefs at some point in the future.
    - Lariscus 2y ago
      Thats incorrect, it is free software but incompatible with the GPL.
    - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
      > ZFS is non-free so of course it cannot be part of Debian proper ZFS is under the CDDL which is a perfectly good free and open-source software license, just some people view it as incompatible with GPL (IANAL, but this is apparently somewhat controversial; see the wikipedia page) so Debian doesn't distribute ZFS .ko files for Linux in binary form. They do, however, have an official package for it[1], just using DKMS to compile it locally. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distrib... [1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/zfs-dkms https://packages.debian.org/sid/zfs-dkms
samcat116 2y ago
I'd be worried how proxmox would scale past a few racks. The bones are all good, but I'm not sure how much scale testing their API layer has had.
INTPenis 2y ago
I'm using it now, even paying for it, and it works very well but I only have one wish. That they could distribute an image based distro, or a slimmed down appliance ISO. It just seems unnecessary to have an actual OS on each host. Specially since I've been impressed by Talos and Openshift for a while.
- whalesalad 2y ago
  https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container
  - INTPenis 2y ago
    Not what I meant. That's just how to run LXC containers, which I never use because I find OCI much more convenient. I meant the hypervisor host OS should be image based atomic/immutable.
polski-g 2y ago
Is there a VDI solution that runs on proxmox? I've only found UDS Enterprise.

If I were building a datacenter today I would go with proxmox. It's "just debian" under the hood and can be customized and controlled a multitude of ways (UI, CLI on the box, Terraform, API, etc)

throw0101c 2y ago

> If I were building a datacenter today I would go with proxmox. I use Proxmox as well in a small-ish deployment, but have also heard good things with Xcp-ng. At a previous job used OpenStack.

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]

NexRebular 2y ago

Or if you'd like to help preventing linux monoculturalization of datacenters, MNX Triton or vanilla SmartOS are very good options too.

yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
My impression, strengthened by https://wiki.smartos.org/managing-instances-with-vmamd/#using-vmadm-sendreceive https://wiki.smartos.org/managing-instances-with-vmamd/#usin... , is that SmartOS preferentially operates at the per-host scale, which is probably a disadvantage in a datacenter setting. (I don't know enough about MNX Triton to comment)
whalesalad 2y ago
The cool thing about proxmox is that it is - again - "just debian" so there is really no vendor lock-in. Yes they do have commercial support/update subscriptions but the community offering is open (https://github.com/proxmox https://github.com/proxmox). So I do not worry too much about lock-in or monoculturalization. At the end of the day it is a wrapper around fundamental components of Linux. They do not have any proprietary secret sauce that would F you down the road. Correction I see now that the projects you reference are Solaris based. I am down with that cause too - but if you are a BSD/Solaris shop expect to do a lot of things on your own. The linux virtualization space is substantially larger (not necessarily suggesting it is better...)
- jclulow 2y ago
  As an aside: Solaris is something you can buy from Oracle, which they forked from OpenSolaris 15 years ago. SmartOS is a distribution of illumos, which also forked from the same code 15 years ago. They have since diverged, in some areas dramatically, so we (the illumos community) don't bill ourselves as being Solaris based.

zozbot234 2y ago

Doesn't Proxmox use a separate kernel package compared to Debian? That's kinda annoying because it ends up making the distro a 'Frankendebian' at best. Even using an up-to-date kernel from the stable backports repositories is a lot better than that.

brirec 2y ago
They use a slightly modified Ubuntu kernel (https://github.com/proxmox/pve-kernel https://github.com/proxmox/pve-kernel), with things like ZFS added. They also really are good about using proper Debian tooling, and so their kernel doesn’t cause any weird dependency issues. Right now they install proxmox-kerne-6.8.12-6 by default (using pseudo-packages called proxmox-default-kernel and proxmox-kernel-6.8 pointing at it), and offer proxmox-kernel-6.11.0-2 as an opt-in package (by installing proxmox-kernel-6.11) I’ve been using the latest opt-in kernels on all of my Proxmox nodes for a few years now, and I’ve never had any issues at all with that myself.
- zozbot234 2y ago
  > things like ZFS added That's a big gotcha - ZFS is non-free so of course it cannot be part of Debian proper. Hopefully we'll get feature parity via Btrfs or Bcachefs at some point in the future.
  - Lariscus 2y ago
    Thats incorrect, it is free software but incompatible with the GPL.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago
    > ZFS is non-free so of course it cannot be part of Debian proper ZFS is under the CDDL which is a perfectly good free and open-source software license, just some people view it as incompatible with GPL (IANAL, but this is apparently somewhat controversial; see the wikipedia page) so Debian doesn't distribute ZFS .ko files for Linux in binary form. They do, however, have an official package for it[1], just using DKMS to compile it locally. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distribution_License https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Development_and_Distrib... [1] https://packages.debian.org/sid/zfs-dkms https://packages.debian.org/sid/zfs-dkms

samcat116 2y ago

I'd be worried how proxmox would scale past a few racks. The bones are all good, but I'm not sure how much scale testing their API layer has had.

INTPenis 2y ago

I'm using it now, even paying for it, and it works very well but I only have one wish. That they could distribute an image based distro, or a slimmed down appliance ISO. It just seems unnecessary to have an actual OS on each host. Specially since I've been impressed by Talos and Openshift for a while.

whalesalad 2y ago
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Linux_Container
- INTPenis 2y ago
  Not what I meant. That's just how to run LXC containers, which I never use because I find OCI much more convenient. I meant the hypervisor host OS should be image based atomic/immutable.

polski-g 2y ago

Is there a VDI solution that runs on proxmox? I've only found UDS Enterprise.