Proxmox free...

[Marcos de Oliveira]

We have a very small virtualization infrastructure with two XenServer Hypervisors. Recently, I found out that VMware had implemented a web administration client for its free ESXi and it is something that has always bothered me about XenServer/VMware (to need an windows machine just for administration). But as KVM has evolved a lot when coming to guest performance, I was wondering if it would not worth a try, as our VMs are mainly Linux. Then I found out about Proxmox and oVirt. But when reading about Proxmox, it is not very clear how its Free solution works. The pricing page even says that one should buy a subscription to have access to the community forum, so I thought I could not even create this thread. But what bothered me the most is that one should have the subscription to have stable update. Does it mean that without a subscription, I can receive an update that will break my system? Because it is not stable? Most Freemium software have downsides in its free version, but mainly coming to features. Not providing unstable updates to its users, because it's dangerous businesswise.
Thanks in advance.

 

[manu]

Difference Opensource projects have different ways of funding their developpement.
With Proxmox VE you get the full feature version no matter which subscription plan you have, and not a amputed version missing enterprise features like clustering, HA, AD based authentification.

Concerning the stability of releases: we do test internally before releasing everything. Usually we leave the packages in the pve-no-subscription for a couple of weeks and then move them to the pve enterprise repository, after positive feedback from our community.
I find this a fair deal as you can balance between your budget and stability requirements , most people are happy with that, running with the pve-no-subscription repository at home, and the pve-enterprise at work.

Regarding the technical side, we have a lot of documentation concerning migration to Proxmox VE migration with KVM. You can have a look at https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE, and the migration will be even even faster if you mainly use Linux VMs.

 

[Marcos de Oliveira]

Difference Opensource projects have different ways of funding their developpement.
With Proxmox VE you get the full feature version no matter which subscription plan you have, and not a amputed version missing enterprise features like clustering, HA, AD based authentification.

Concerning the stability of releases: we do test internally before releasing everything. Usually we leave the packages in the pve-no-subscription for a couple of weeks and then move them to the pve enterprise repository, after positive feedback from our community.
I find this a fair deal as you can balance between your budget and stability requirements , most people are happy with that, running with the pve-no-subscription repository at home, and the pve-enterprise at work.

Regarding the technical side, we have a lot of documentation concerning migration to Proxmox VE migration with KVM. You can have a look at https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE, and the migration will be even even faster if you mainly use Linux VMs.

Thanks for your fast reply. I'll definitely give it a try. But if you don't mind getting a suggestion, you should remove the "Support via community forum" from the community edition, as it may scare people. You don't really charge people for using your forum, so why let it there? Just create another "plan" like: "Free community support". It seems more attractive for Home Labs and Small Business which has no money to spend. It may boost the userbase, and so, improve development, as the open-source community are very skeptical about products that pretend to be free, but say you are cheating if you don't pay something.