[SOLVED] Licensing for nested PVE on single host

May 26, 2026
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Hi folks I got 2 questions I am planning on getting Ryzen 9 9900x 12 cores 24 threads with 128 gigs of memory for homelab physical host.
Can I buy 1 community license and run on it proxmox home lab with couple of virtual PVEs and couple of VMs on them pretty much for networking tests and just to reply to ping and synthetic load ? My main goal is getting better in proxmox coming from 10 years of VMware support.

Thank you very much for your time.
 
With one community subscription you can only license one PVE with one socket, the physical host would be the best choice.

For testing and playing around you don't need a subscription at all, just use the no-subscription repo.
You will have to live with the no subscription popup at login but if you are used to windows that should not be an issue ...
 
With one community subscription you can only license one PVE with one socket, the physical host would be the best choice.

For testing and playing around you don't need a subscription at all, just use the no-subscription repo.
You will have to live with the no subscription popup at login but if you are used to windows that should not be an issue ...
Thank you for the fast answer. Living with free version last 2 years but it is time to be part of the community as well. Can I cluster 2 virtual PVEs and move VMs across without license ?
 
Can I cluster 2 virtual PVEs and move VMs across without license ?
Sure.

You can do anything on PVE without any subscription. You just can't get access to the subscription repo, which is a curated repo of the latest (already) available releases from the no-subscription & test repos.
 
As mentioned, there is no feature difference if you have a subscription applied or not.
With a subscription you get access to the enterprise repositories, which provide the most stable packages, and depending on the level, a subscription can include support tickets.

If it is a nested test setup, the no-sub repos are fine.

And finally, a subscription key can only be applied to one installation at a time. There is no mechanism that would make it technically possible to have a subscription applied to the physical host, and the nested virtualized ones can also utilize it.
 
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