Not a vCenter?

[etfz]

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.

 

[fiona]

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.

 

[dguaraldi]

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?

 

[Johannes S]

It sounds like I am not going to be impressed????

How can you know this without trying? Nobody knows your requirements except you.

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.

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.

Is there at least DRS and HA?

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.

 

[dguaraldi]

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.

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.

 

[hnguk]

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.

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


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.