Proxmox VE

Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open source server virtualization platform that manages KVM virtual machines and LXC containers from one web interface. The software itself is free to download and use, and the vendor sells annual subscriptions per CPU socket that provide access to the enterprise repository and support rather than unlocking the software.

Running full virtual machines and lightweight containers side by side is the design decision that defines the product. A workload needing its own kernel or a different operating system gets a KVM virtual machine, while a Linux service that only needs isolation gets a container with far less overhead. Being able to choose per workload, and manage both from the same cluster and interface, avoids running two platforms to cover the same estate.

Clustering, high availability and live migration come as part of the platform rather than as paid add-ons, which is the point where the licence model differs sharply from the commercial hypervisors. Recent releases have added a dynamic load balancer, high availability balancing migration, software defined networking with WireGuard fabrics and a datacenter dashboard.

The subscription tiers matter for production use because they determine repository access, support ticket volume and response commitments. Proxmox also sells a backup server and a mail gateway that integrate with the virtual environment, and a datacenter manager for overseeing multiple clusters.