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Why I Like Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) is an open-source server virtualization management solution that has gained significant popularity among IT professionals and enthusiasts. Here are some reasons why I like Proxmox VE:

  1. Open Source: Proxmox VE is open-source software, which means it is free to use and has a strong community of users and developers who contribute to its improvement. This openness fosters innovation and allows users to customize the platform to suit their needs.
  2. Ease of Use: Proxmox VE has a user-friendly web-based interface that makes it easy to manage virtual machines (VMs) and containers. The intuitive design allows both beginners and experienced users to navigate and perform tasks efficiently.
  3. Support for Multiple Virtualization Technologies: Proxmox VE supports both KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) for full virtualization and LXC (Linux Containers) for lightweight containerization. This flexibility allows users to choose the best technology for their specific use cases.
  4. High Availability: Proxmox VE offers built-in high availability (HA) features, allowing users to create clusters of servers that can automatically failover in case of hardware or software failures. This ensures minimal downtime for critical applications.
  5. Comprehensive Backup and Restore Options: Proxmox VE provides robust backup and restore capabilities, including scheduled backups, snapshot support, and the ability to back up both VMs and containers. This is crucial for data protection and disaster recovery.
  6. Scalability: Proxmox VE is highly scalable, making it suitable for both small home labs and large enterprise environments. Users can easily add more nodes to a Proxmox cluster as their needs grow.
  7. Active Community and Support: Proxmox VE has an active community forum where users can seek help, share knowledge, and discuss best practices. Additionally, Proxmox offers professional support services for businesses that require guaranteed assistance.

Where I’ve Used Proxmox VE

I’ve used Proxmox in a couple of different environments:

My Homelab

I run Proxmox on a PowerEdge R740xd server with 2x Intel Xeon Gold 6154 CPUs, 512 GB DDR4 ECC RAM, and 12x 4TB HDDs in RAID 10. I also have 2x NVIDIA A2 GPUs and a NVIDIA T4 GPU in passthrough mode for AI/ML workloads. My Proxmox setup includes:

  • 2x FreeIPA domain controllers for a centralized authentication system.
  • A “gpu-kit” VM for AI/ML experiments.
  • A Grafana VM for visualizing Prometheus metrics.
  • A set of VMs for my distributed systems research.
  • A Minecraft server.
  • Some other miscellaneous VMs.

University of New Hampshire Cybersecurity Lab

In the Cybersecurity Lab, we have a Proxmox cluster, currently setup as follows:

  • 2x Dell PowerEdge R7525 servers with 2x AMD EPYC 7742 CPUs, 1 TTB DDR4 ECC RAM, and 2x 800 GB SSDs in RAID 1, and Mellanox ConnectX-4 100 GbE NICs.
  • 1x Dell PowerEdge R7525 server with 2x AMD EPYC 7542 CPUs, 384 GB DDR4 ECC RAM, and 24x 4TB NVMe drives, and Mellanox ConnectX-4 100 GbE NICs.
    • This server is used for storage and runs TrueNAS SCALE.

We are considering adding more nodes in the form of Dell PowerEdge M640 Blade servers to increase our compute capacity.

This cluster is used for various cybersecurity things, including:

  • Cybersecurity course related work
    • Network simulations
    • VM labs
  • Department-based Cybersecurity research
  • Student projects
  • Cybersecurity club & team activities
    • Training
    • Competitions

Conclusion

Overall, Proxmox VE is a powerful and versatile virtualization platform that offers a wide range of features and benefits. The robust API and CLI tools make it easy to automate tasks and integrate with other systems, while the active community and professional support options provide users with the resources they need to succeed. Whether you’re a home lab enthusiast or an enterprise IT professional, Proxmox VE is definitely worth considering for your virtualization needs.