Why I think Proxmox is the best hypervisor for small deployments

In my view, Proxmox VE is the best free hypervisor for small deployments. It is an open-source virtualisation platform built on Debian by Proxmox, a company based in Vienna, Austria. It is powerful, reliable and easy to install.

Free, with paid support if you want it

Proxmox VE is free to use. Access to the Enterprise repository, which includes support, costs between €105 and €980 per socket per year. For businesses with a limited budget, that is a fraction of what the large commercial platforms cost.

What you get

• The essential features: live migration, high availability, storage replication, and backup and restore.
• Virtual machines and containers on one platform: KVM virtual machines and LXC containers, managed together with their storage and networking.
• Wide guest support: Linux, Windows and FreeBSD, among others.
• Room to grow: from a single server to a multi-server cluster, adding resources as needs grow.
• Hyperconverged infrastructure out of the box: combined with Ceph, Proxmox is a low-cost alternative to VMware vSAN or Microsoft Azure Stack HCI.
• A complete REST API: almost every aspect of the platform can be managed programmatically, which helps with automation and integration with other systems.
• Support options: online documentation, community forums and, with a subscription, support tickets.

A web interface that makes small deployments easier

The web interface is clear and intuitive. From it you can create, configure and monitor virtual machines and containers, and manage storage, networking and security, without having to learn complex command-line tools. You can see the performance of each machine at a glance and spot problems quickly. For small teams with limited time, or limited Linux experience, that makes a real difference.

Compared with VMware and Hyper-V

Proxmox is a credible alternative to VMware and Hyper-V for three reasons:

• Cost: there are no license fees to run it; the subscription is optional.
• Scalability: the same platform covers a single host and a cluster.
• Flexibility: it runs a wide range of guest operating systems, and lets you consolidate several physical servers onto fewer hosts.

The drawbacks

• It is built on Debian. It benefits from Debian’s stability and security, but the host needs regular updates to keep up.
• It is built from many open-source components, so its roadmap depends partly on the pace of those projects, which can limit what a given release can add.
• The company is small. It is responsive and agile, but it can only deliver a limited number of improvements and new features at a time.

My conclusion

Combined with Proxmox Backup Server, Proxmox VE can replace the commercial platforms from VMware and Microsoft at a fraction of the cost. It does not have all of their advanced features, but it is stable, secure and powerful, and it is used by large companies and research institutions around the world.

That is why I believe Proxmox is the best free hypervisor for small deployments. I have written more about it under the Proxmox tag.