Proxmox and ESXi

[Kered124]

Hello,

 

I did a little searching through the LTT forums for any content related to Proxmox and ESXi. While I did find some information, I was unable to find any articles specifically comparing Proxmox and ESXi in terms of their features, and their drawbacks. I'd like to compile a list of features and drawbacks for Proxmox, ESXi, and any other hypervisors you see as good competition. The goal is to compare only free versions of software. 

 

Thanks!

[Anghammarad]

ESXi is still the Main competitor. It's system is well hung, means less faults, less updates and a broad spectrum of features. But only free as long as you don't want to use it's cluster/failover features. Good for Windows and Linux virtualization.

 

Proxmox looks good too, lots of things reminds of ESXi Hypervisor, but then KVM, I know from using it at Work, KVM is still a piece in development, means lots of updates and feature releases. But too good for Windows and Linux virtualization.

 

Then there is the MS own Hyper V. But that is mostly good for Windows, you can virtualize Linux as well, but there are some less features here. 

 

Then there is Xen from Citrix...

 

To chose the right version of virtualization is usually based on the usage. Do you want to cluster, have failover, need stability, etc. Then I would throw in some bucks and always go for ESXi, just because I saw what can happen with KVM like machines stuck in transfer, needing to reboot the whole Host machine to fix the issue, without the ability to shut down the machine stuck in transit. And so on.

 

Always look on the site of support as well. Pure open source may be cheap and nice, but only as long as you don't need support. To calculate the costs, Compare a solution which costs a specific amount like ESXi the three node entry version for example with a free solution. Then just calculate what a not running Virtualization may cost for a day and compare the numbers.

[brwainer]

17 minutes ago, Anghammarad said:

 

Always look on the site of support as well. Pure open source may be cheap and nice, but only as long as you don't need support. To calculate the costs, Compare a solution which costs a specific amount like ESXi the three node entry version for example with a free solution. Then just calculate what a not running Virtualization may cost for a day and compare the numbers.

Everything written here is correct, but I want to add that Proxmox does have subscriptions, which at some levels include official, direct support via tickets instead of (in addition to) the very helpful community forum, where most of the posts I see get some sort of comment or answer from an employee anyway.

[Anghammarad]

1 minute ago, brwainer said:

Everything written here is correct, but I want to add that Proxmox does have subscriptions, which at some levels include official, direct support via tickets instead of (in addition to) the very helpful community forum, where most of the posts I see get some sort of comment or answer from an employee anyway.

Then it isn't free anymore =) 

 

And again, KvM is still in development... so some issues can't be fixed without a new release. You have to live with them. 

[Kered124]

Hmm. I was looking heavily at Proxmox because I really want to play with the fail-over features. At the moment, I don't have a genuine need for the redundancy, it is just a toy. I have used KVM before on my home server, and it was alright, although it did lack features at the time. The last time I tried it was probably 2-3 years ago, so I'm sure it has improved. New questions for me are: Does KVM have fail-over capabilities? How much is an ESXi license?

[brwainer]

13 minutes ago, Kered124 said:

Hmm. I was looking heavily at Proxmox because I really want to play with the fail-over features. At the moment, I don't have a genuine need for the redundancy, it is just a toy. I have used KVM before on my home server, and it was alright, although it did lack features at the time. The last time I tried it was probably 2-3 years ago, so I'm sure it has improved. New questions for me are: Does KVM have fail-over capabilities? How much is an ESXi license?

Proxmox (not technically KVM in general) can be set up in an HA cluster. This requires some form of shared storage, such as NFS, iSCSI, or Ceph. That allows you to have automatic failover with very little data loss, due to the shared storage. Proxmox also has two different types of Replication, one geared towards disaster recovery, and another geared towards backups, both of which require manual work in order to bring a replica online.

[Kered124]

Thank you for clarifying the Proxmox HA cluster features, this makes much more sense now. I am wondering now if I can do the same thing with KVM under Ubuntu. The goal is to get a HA cluster running under some flavor of Linux. I'd really like to have a webGUI like what Proxmox has. 

[Mikensan]

The vSphere suite is available for about $200 from VMUG which includes a LOT of goodies. If you like playing you'll be very happy. It's fully legit and intended for lab use, and this is the way I ended up going once @leadeater mentioned it in a post (I think it was him). https://www.vmug.com/Join//EVALExperience

    VMware vCenter Server v6.x Standard
    VMware vSphere® ESXi Enterprise Plus with Operations Management™ (6 CPU licenses)
    VMware vCloud Suite® Standard
    VMware vRealize Operations™
    VMware vRealize Log Insight™
    VMware vRealize Operations for Horizon®
    VMware Horizon® Advanced Edition
    VMware vSAN™
    VMware Workstation Pro 12.5
    VMware Fusion Pro 8.5
    VMware NSX Enterprise Edition (6 CPU licenses)
    VMware vRealize Network Insight

 

I think the rules on the forum say to not advocate piracy, that in mind I'll just give you knowledge to use at your own discretion. ESXi and vCenter do not verify serial numbers online in anyway, nor do they require a phone activation. Meaning when you download ESXi (because you sign up on their site for a trial) and enter your fully legal VMUG serial number, it will not verify it. ;-)

 

I really enjoy the vmware suite, I think their networking management is the best in the business. In terms of performance, you'll read conflicting results and I think this is because the interface between the storage and hypervisor is important.