Is it safe to use Proxmox VE (No-Subscription / Free) for small-scale production?

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Ripon

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Feb 2, 2026
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Hello everyone,
I am a new Proxmox VE user and also a small business owner. I would like to ask for some guidance from the community.
For a small-scale production environment, is it reasonable or safe to use Proxmox VE with the no-subscription (free) repository?
My use case is relatively small (few servers / nodes), and I am trying to keep costs low at the beginning. I understand that the no-subscription version does not include enterprise support and uses the community repository, but all features are available.

I would like to know:
  • Is the no-subscription version commonly used in small production setups?
  • What kind of risks should I be aware of (updates, stability, maintenance)?
  • At what point would you strongly recommend moving to a paid subscription?


Any real-world experience or best practices would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you in advance for your advice.
 
Ripon said:
is it reasonable or safe to use Proxmox VE with the no-subscription (free) repository?
Click to expand...
The very clear and ultimate answer is of course: it depends!

If you have enough experience to administrate a Debian server consistently and continuously over years, including disaster recovery, then you may go that route. (And use a single server instead of a cluster.)

If the loss of the installed PVE - without the chance of a quick repair - will be a problem for your business: look for some support before that happens. (And evaluate a crash tolerant concept with some redundancy --> a cluster.)

Additionally: if you actually earn money running PVE you should get at least the cheap community subscription, without active support but with access to the enterprise repository!

Just my 2€¢...
 
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Safe? Very likely. PVE is basically a superset of Debian, with lvm-thin and zfs and a nice web UI + community. PDM should be part of your rollout.

When you get a chance, if it's Prod - buy support / licenses. And regardless, have backups. PBS (I consider it essential) on separate hardware.
 
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They are no difference in package between the no-subscription && enterprise repo.

Packages are going first to the no subscription repo, so they could have more bugs (because less people have tested it), before going to the enteprise repo.

Best way in both case, is to always test on a preproduction server. But If you really don't have time or ressources, enteprise repo will be more safe in this case.

(kernel update && qemu update are generally the 2 main things to monitor as if they have bugs,they can really impact the production)
 
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UdoB said:
The very clear and ultimate answer is of course: it depends!

If you have enough experience to administrate a Debian server consistently and continuously over years, including disaster recovery, then you may go that route. (And use a single server instead of a cluster.)

If the loss of the installed PVE - without the chance of a quick repair - will be a problem for your business: look for some support before that happens. (And evaluate a crash tolerant concept with some redundancy --> a cluster.)

Additionally: if you actually earn money running PVE you should get at least the cheap community subscription, without active support but with access to the enterprise repository!

Just my 2€¢...
Click to expand...

@Ripon
And more to point out:
It is free software and not free beer.

The price is very decent compared with other Enterprise Virtualization solutions.

If you use the software to earn money consider to buy at least the smaller subscriptions based on your experience and risk appetite.

This helps to maintain the software, which is really hard work. The result of people buying subscriptions and support, is the smooth experience with the no-subscription repository.

This is a ongoing process, so it would be helpful if you maintain that process and buy subscriptions.

Maybe it is possible to put the subscriptions in consideration, when you do the pricing for your product. At the same time you buy yourself peace of mind, with proper support.

BG, Lucas

PS: You can very likely save money in terms of employee time, when you get consulting from a Proxmox partners, because they have done similar setups in the past.
 
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My suggestion is, be careful with new kernels. Try to stay on LTS if possible. If you do not need new features or patches, just be conservative with patching. If you want to use Ceph, stay on n-1, for now on Squid. Tentacle I guess is tech preview anyway.
 
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Yes, the no-sub repos are fine as long as you have Linux SME skills.

Always have a Plan B which is backups.

I highly recommend you test updates on a separate server/cluster before pushing to production.
 
I can not recommend to run Proxmox with no-subscription Repository in production / commercial deployments.
I am running Proxmox no-subscription in my home lab and had it break due to upgrades several times.

Actually this happened just a few days a go: after installing package upgrades as usual my LXC container refused to start due to NFS mount passed from host to LXC container being broken after they pushed LXC upgrades. For now I had to downgrade the LXC package as recommended by a forum user.

Another example was the major upgrade from PVE 8 to PVE 9. After upgrading my system to PVE 9 I was not able to use PCIe passthrough anymore (passthrough of HBA to virtual machine).
I had to stay on an old kernel (PVE 8 kernel) until they fixed it in PVE 9 kernel.

Another example was docker in LXC containers breaking after they pushed another LXC upgrade a few month back.

To me it is pretty obvious that no-subscription users are kind of "beta testers" in the Proxmox ecosystem.
Me personally I would recommend going with enterprise repository for sure in any kind of production / commercial environment.

At work we actually went with XCP-ng as they have the same repository and grade of stability for community and enterprise users.
The only difference lies in the GUI / management system which is called Xen Orchestra. There is the different version for enterprise users.
But the XCP-ng hypervisor and packages itself will be rock solid for community / free users as they do not have this sort of two-class society repository strategy in place.
 
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