I hope this kind of posts is permitted in this forum. Please notify me if not, i will remove it.
First impressions
Initially my experience with PXMX VE 6.2 was terrible. Fortunately this was all on me and lowering the XMP profile from 3200 to 2933 Mhz solved any issues. At this point i have to mention i am deeply unimpressed with the installer as offered when installing from ISO. I hope this progresses into something more mature.
Now, after about one week toying around i have a different view. I had high hopes for Proxmox as it used Qemu which i had got to know as an incredibly powerful tool. This made my initial perspective and comments quite harsh. Basically, now, i am content with Proxmox as it gives me more ease of use with Qemu which i could not find elsewhere yet.
Exploring Proxmox
At this moment i am close to achieving PCI passthrough for a powerful AMD Radeon GPU which was well documented. Such informative wiki pages are a must for anyone.
I own a cheap USB HSM which i expect to use to build a small PKI on this machine. I expect to document how i attain this and share it for inclusion in the wiki.
Templates are a bit confusing. I expected there would be a library of profiles to load where i could select for example "MS Windows 10 with UEFI", select the ISO and get on with it. LXC still has me dumbfounded on how to use it appropriately but i'm getting there i guess.
The lack of masquerading as a one-click option is a bit cumbersome. The manual shares an example which is not relevant to the default installation (i think i performed) Not a big issue, just cumbersome to work around.
Documentation
To have all documentation at hand is also something unexpected and shows the commitment there is to building a solid technical product. To be honest, i barely ever read a manual. Just when i run into trouble, which is possibly an arguable approach, though not uncommon i gather. This also means i have to get used to things, i do not catch on based on what i read alone. The times i need it though, it was there and well written.
Web UI
The web interface is getting along quite nicely. I hope to see it mature more. Annoying is what appears to be the repeat loss of control from the web interface for some VM. When a VM gets into trouble there are also a repeat notication a lock could not be aquired. I will check the wiki i guess.
This also brings me to one recurring annonyance. When a VM gets into trouble one hack i found it to reset the host cpu configured. Either reset it or set it to host. I fail to understand this since using QEMU from bash scripts as i did before never resulted in such weirdness.
The web interface could maybe use a REPL with tab completion as to make it more "invisible". The ability to make panels reordered or dissapear would also be nice. Maybe i missed this but i could not figure it out the few times i checked. Which led me to reflect on using virt-manager instead of the web interface, not sure if that would work.
Maybe using HAXE to build a cross platform UI for Proxmox would be a very interesting project as Haxe permits to write a single codebase for web, mobile, desktop ...
Conclusion
At this point Proxmox is not exactly something i would recommend to just anyone, but i would recommend it to more technically experienced and more adventurous people. If memory serves well it has come a long way since i first looked at it. Based on what i know about Qemu i expect proxmox to remain a strong product. Looking at the competition i do not see it compete well. The use case remains with the more technical users of the technical department. Which can also turn out to be a good thing.
First impressions
Initially my experience with PXMX VE 6.2 was terrible. Fortunately this was all on me and lowering the XMP profile from 3200 to 2933 Mhz solved any issues. At this point i have to mention i am deeply unimpressed with the installer as offered when installing from ISO. I hope this progresses into something more mature.
Now, after about one week toying around i have a different view. I had high hopes for Proxmox as it used Qemu which i had got to know as an incredibly powerful tool. This made my initial perspective and comments quite harsh. Basically, now, i am content with Proxmox as it gives me more ease of use with Qemu which i could not find elsewhere yet.
Exploring Proxmox
At this moment i am close to achieving PCI passthrough for a powerful AMD Radeon GPU which was well documented. Such informative wiki pages are a must for anyone.
I own a cheap USB HSM which i expect to use to build a small PKI on this machine. I expect to document how i attain this and share it for inclusion in the wiki.
Templates are a bit confusing. I expected there would be a library of profiles to load where i could select for example "MS Windows 10 with UEFI", select the ISO and get on with it. LXC still has me dumbfounded on how to use it appropriately but i'm getting there i guess.
The lack of masquerading as a one-click option is a bit cumbersome. The manual shares an example which is not relevant to the default installation (i think i performed) Not a big issue, just cumbersome to work around.
Documentation
To have all documentation at hand is also something unexpected and shows the commitment there is to building a solid technical product. To be honest, i barely ever read a manual. Just when i run into trouble, which is possibly an arguable approach, though not uncommon i gather. This also means i have to get used to things, i do not catch on based on what i read alone. The times i need it though, it was there and well written.
Web UI
The web interface is getting along quite nicely. I hope to see it mature more. Annoying is what appears to be the repeat loss of control from the web interface for some VM. When a VM gets into trouble there are also a repeat notication a lock could not be aquired. I will check the wiki i guess.
This also brings me to one recurring annonyance. When a VM gets into trouble one hack i found it to reset the host cpu configured. Either reset it or set it to host. I fail to understand this since using QEMU from bash scripts as i did before never resulted in such weirdness.
The web interface could maybe use a REPL with tab completion as to make it more "invisible". The ability to make panels reordered or dissapear would also be nice. Maybe i missed this but i could not figure it out the few times i checked. Which led me to reflect on using virt-manager instead of the web interface, not sure if that would work.
Maybe using HAXE to build a cross platform UI for Proxmox would be a very interesting project as Haxe permits to write a single codebase for web, mobile, desktop ...
Conclusion
At this point Proxmox is not exactly something i would recommend to just anyone, but i would recommend it to more technically experienced and more adventurous people. If memory serves well it has come a long way since i first looked at it. Based on what i know about Qemu i expect proxmox to remain a strong product. Looking at the competition i do not see it compete well. The use case remains with the more technical users of the technical department. Which can also turn out to be a good thing.
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