New to Proxmox, considering it for business venture, have some questions...

[willieb1172]

Hi,

I’ve searched around the forums and gained some knowledge but I'm also interested in community comments to my particular business model.

I'm in the market for a cloud based virtualization software solution. I've been researching for a couple weeks and keep ending up back at Proxmox. ESXi, XenServer, Parallels, and other solutions are just too expensive as we are trying to start up on a budget. We don't necessarily want something "free" but don’t want it to break the startup budget either. But paid support is a must. We want support we can count on to be there when we have a need. Proxmox seems a perfect fit, but I've never heard of it before I started my research so honestly I'm a little leery of using it in a commercial production environment with paying customers. I've also noticed folks here on the forum using it for personal use, etc. But maybe Proxmox, in it's 5 year maturity is now moving more commercial? It also concerns me a bit that Proxmox is not based in the US, support wise, language support, etc.

We will offer cloud data storage services with apps available for customers to install. The apps will have access to the customer’s stored data (i.e. photo app). Here are some of the requirements.

• Virtualized environment allowing 100% isolation for each customer's storage and applications.
• All guest OS’s will be linux (Debian 7.x).
• We want to use as small amount of resources possible for the guest OS’s (probably OpenVZ)
• Each customer will need a control panel to login to. We want to lock them down to limited permissions, but allow the customer to install a small number of applications, and have access to their home folder via the applications. An example would be if they have a folder in their home called ./photos. We may allow a photo gallery application and it will need access to that folder.
• If at all possible, we want customer data to be encrypted and protected from root user access. We, as the business, do not want to know what the customer is storing.
• Automation – The complete automation can come a little later, but we will need to have full automation where the customer can open our website and signup, and everything will be created, like the vm or container, user information, password, lockdown, and permissions set, control panel, etc.
• We will also need billing software integration.

For the OS and resource needs, a perfect fit seems to be openvz containers, which is why we keep ending up back at Proxmox, because it seems to be the most matured openvz management panel with reasonable costs. So for the questions...

• Does proxmox have a built-in container panel for end users? Can I custom add (scripted) applications for customer installs? Or is the user panel something I install separately, such as Parallels Plesk?
• Does Proxmox only do vm and container management or does it support automated customer creation, billing, etc? If not, what do you recommend?
• Are there any reputable known companies in the US using Proxmox? From the information above, is the business model a good fit for Proxmox? Or are their any business owners or employees on here that can describe how it works for them?
• I guess I could have just asked, from the requirements above, which items does proxmox not do?

I know that’s a lot of info, but any information you can provide to help me I would greatly appreciate it. Thanks.

 

[udo]

Hi,

I’ve searched around the forums and gained some knowledge but I'm also interested in community comments to my particular business model.

...

We will offer cloud data storage services with apps available for customers to install. The apps will have access to the customer’s stored data (i.e. photo app). Here are some of the requirements.

• Each customer will need a control panel to login to. We want to lock them down to limited permissions, but allow the customer to install a small number of applications, and have access to their home folder via the applications. An example would be if they have a folder in their home called ./photos. We may allow a photo gallery application and it will need access to that folder.

Hi,
with pve every customer see his own VZ...

• If at all possible, we want customer data to be encrypted and protected from root user access. We, as the business, do not want to know what the customer is storing.
• Automation – The complete automation can come a little later, but we will need to have full automation where the customer can open our website and signup, and everything will be created, like the vm or container, user information, password, lockdown, and permissions set, control panel, etc.

encryption is not easy - perhaps with encfs, but how should the passphrase input work?

• We will also need billing software integration.

If I'm right some other people work for/with an billing solution. Use the search function to find the thread.

About "pve using companies in US"? Why it's important that the companies are in the US? Does virtualisation work different with direct NSA-access??
Joking apart: we use pve in production since over four years and are happy with the solution (we also have ESX-Server, but only for the old things...).


Udo