Not a vCenter?

E

etfz

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Aug 29, 2025
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Hi,

I've just installed this, and to be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for something more akin to vCenter, which wholly replaces ESXi as far as management capabilities go, but here I'm basically limited to starting, stopping and migrating VMs? Is there something I'm missing? Are there plans to do more? I understand the FAQ currently mentions "basic" management.

I only have a single cluster, but my main issue is I can't access it using a single address, because that node might go down. There are third party high availability solutions, but that's not a great experience.
 
Hi,
the Proxmox Datacenter Manager is only version 1, so yes, the feature set is rather limited for now. But with continued development, more features will get added. For now, if you are missing an operation/feature, there is a link in the datacenter manager web UI to easily reach the web UI of an online Proxmox VE node and you can manage the cluster from there.
 
So I am looking to replace a fairly large VMware implementation and haven't got around to installing Proxmox yet.
I did download the ISO's, just need to dig up some hardware.
It sounds like I am not going to be impressed????
Was hoping this wasn't going to be the case. I understand this is version 1 and I am fairly patient but I need some type of assurance there will be more in a timely manner before making the move.

Is there at least DRS and HA?
 
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dguaraldi said:
It sounds like I am not going to be impressed????
Click to expand...
How can you know this without trying? Nobody knows your requirements except you.

dguaraldi said:
Was hoping this wasn't going to be the case. I understand this is version 1 and I am fairly patient but I need some type of assurance there will be more in a timely manner before making the move.
Click to expand...

It's the version 1 of the Datacenter Manager aka their equivalent of VSphere. It already allows migration of vms between different clusters or single-node-instances of ProxmoxVE and some other features see https://pdm.proxmox.com/docs/roadmap.html#release-history for the current version and https://pdm.proxmox.com/docs/roadmap.html on what's planned. It has definitively less features than Vsphere right now, the question however is whether the existing features are good enough for you ;)
It's also important to note that while the Datacenter Manager is still quite early, ProxmoxVE is a quite matured product (being at version 9, the ProxmoxBackupServer is at version 4 right now), many things which are not yet possible inside the Datacenter Manager are possible inside a ProxmoxVE Cluster, since the nodes have their own managment UI which allows managing of the whole cluster they are part of.
dguaraldi said:
Is there at least DRS and HA?
Click to expand...
High-Availibility is there: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/High_Availability

Whether this is enough for your needs only you can decide.

Regarding DRS: The HA-Features have Cluster Resource Scheduling but from what I read (I never used this or DRS so I can't really tell from my own experience) it's still quite lacking. @gyptazy from Proxmox Partner Credativ developed an open source third-party software which aim's at providing DRS functionality for the Proxmox ecosystem: https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB


So I would create small cluster inside your existing VMWare with virtual machines and play around. Of course this can't replace a real test with real hardware but you will get a first idea.
 
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Johannes S said:
How can you know this without trying? Nobody knows your requirements except you.



It's the version 1 of the Datacenter Manager aka their equivalent of VSphere. It already allows migration of vms between different clusters or single-node-instances of ProxmoxVE and some other features see https://pdm.proxmox.com/docs/roadmap.html#release-history for the current version and https://pdm.proxmox.com/docs/roadmap.html on what's planned. It has definitively less features than Vsphere right now, the question however is whether the existing features are good enough for you ;)
It's also important to note that while the Datacenter Manager is still quite early, ProxmoxVE is a quite matured product (being at version 9, the ProxmoxBackupServer is at version 4 right now), many things which are not yet possible inside the Datacenter Manager are possible inside a ProxmoxVE Cluster, since the nodes have their own managment UI which allows managing of the whole cluster they are part of.

High-Availibility is there: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/High_Availability

Whether this is enough for your needs only you can decide.

Regarding DRS: The HA-Features have Cluster Resource Scheduling but from what I read (I never used this or DRS so I can't really tell from my own experience) it's still quite lacking. @gyptazy from Proxmox Partner Credativ developed an open source third-party software which aim's at providing DRS functionality for the Proxmox ecosystem: https://github.com/gyptazy/ProxLB


So I would create small cluster inside your existing VMWare with virtual machines and play around. Of course this can't replace a real test with real hardware but you will get a first idea.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the time you spent on the response, much appreciated.
I need to dig up some hardware as I want to try and present the external storage we currently use, Unity, HPe's Nimble and alletra using ISCSi etc..
I am hoping to get going in the next week or 2.
Wish me luck.
 
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etfz said:
Hi,

I've just installed this, and to be honest, I'm a little disappointed. I was hoping for something more akin to vCenter, which wholly replaces ESXi as far as management capabilities go, but here I'm basically limited to starting, stopping and migrating VMs? Is there something I'm missing? Are there plans to do more? I understand the FAQ currently mentions "basic" management.

I only have a single cluster, but my main issue is I can't access it using a single address, because that node might go down. There are third party high availability solutions, but that's not a great experience.
Click to expand...
I may be misunderstanding what you are trying to do here but from what I see in the current latest version of PDM you can add a cluster and if one node is down it can access the information via contacting another in the cluster.

Under Remotes > Configuration
1770407375215.png

As for the it being akin to vCenter this is only version 1 of the software and looking at the roadmap suggests a bunch more features they are working on already. Hopefully it does eventually come somewhere close to vCenter but we do have to be aware that vCenter has got years ahead in terms of development time.
 
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hnguk said:
I may be misunderstanding what you are trying to do here but from what I see in the current latest version of PDM you can add a cluster and if one node is down it can access the information via contacting another in the cluster.
Click to expand...
I was referring to using PVE, then. I can do that in PDM, yes, but I have no use for PDM in its current version.
 
To be fair the current version also has a kind of sdn support for EVPN (didn't tried it myself though) so it's not limited to migration. But I agree , the cross-cluster-migration is the main feature right now, if you have no use for this running PDM doesn't make sense.
 
Looking at the roadmap, I can't actually see any mention of expanding VM management capabilities. So, I'm guessing a fully (or mostly) fledged vCenter equivalent simply isn't the idea here, or is very far out.
 
etfz said:
Looking at the roadmap, I can't actually see any mention of expanding VM management capabilities. So, I'm guessing a fully (or mostly) fledged vCenter equivalent simply isn't the idea here, or is very far out.
Click to expand...
Yes Vcenter was a milestone for vsphere but yet no equivalent. PDM and pegaprox can be looked at. Terraform, Ansible will be smthing interesting to check, multitenancy is not really implemented like VMware , here we can restrict to view vm for each "tenant". No vrops/vrli also , need to go to promotheus/elk/graphana, it's not so hard to setup but it's not like deploying ova ;). you can have a look to https://wiki.multiportal.io/ for multitenancy (didn't find others project like that)
About vcenter, each pve node is a management node that if in cluster allow you to configure everything, but per pve node , you have to familiar yourself with cli or use automation , it's new learning and curve of knowledge is not so difficult. You will not find DRS yet except looking at proxlb (or pegaprox if you want to check that include proxlb and others cool feature).
Also no dvswitch equivalent better to tag needed vlan on linux or ovs bridge per node , and on vm side you link vlan to vnet
Happy to see, you are looking to alternative. You are at good place to ask
 
hnguk said:
Rome wasn't built in a day, it's probably far out yes. Just depends on the developers really.
Click to expand...
Nor am I expecting it to be, but as I said, the current city construction plans does not even include a mention of such features, so I have no reason to believe that this is on the agenda.

This is the only thing that's mentioned pertaining to virtual guests:
Bulk actions, such as starting, stopping, or migrating multiple virtual guests at once.
Click to expand...
Additionally, there's this footnote:
Please note that this list outlines general goals and potential ideas rather than fixed promises.
Click to expand...
In other words, what I'm asking for (which includes things like creating and managing virtual guests and networks), is not currently a stated general goal or potential idea.
 
etfz said:
Nor am I expecting it to be, but as I said, the current city construction plans does not even include a mention of such features, so I have no reason to believe that this is on the agenda.

This is the only thing that's mentioned pertaining to virtual guests:

Additionally, there's this footnote:

In other words, what I'm asking for (which includes things like creating and managing virtual guests and networks), is not currently a stated general goal or potential idea.
Click to expand...
Sure I agree, and I too would very much like those features too. Especially the ability to open console of the hosts and guests from datacentre manager.
 
Another things to consider: Due to the opensource nature of ProxmoxVE it's not only possible but completely legal to develop and use custom solutions.
@gyptazy mentioned on his linkedin feed that some third-party developers created PegaProx which also aims at providing a unified managment for ProxmoxVE clusters: https://pegaprox.com/

I didn't had time to test it up to now though and I'm a little bit weary due to the usage of AI but with competent developers AI doesn't need to be a red flag (it's more me being old and conserative ;)). It integrates already mentioned ProxLB for loadbalancing. It might be of interest for anybody who misses a certain feature of vcenter.
 
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