Request for Podman container administration within proxmox

[yoloninja]

Hello,

I'm writing about a gap in capabilities regarding containerisation and container orchestration I believe is obvious and could be corrected fairly easily.

To quickly explain my reasoning, I would like to compare docker to LXC containers briefly. while LXC containers are more flexible, have better tooling, and have tighter integration with the host OS, docker is stateless, distroless, simpler for developers, has lighter images, and has a much larger ecosystem with apps like docker-compose, helm and Kubernetes. So while LXC has its place, it's a strange decision that Proxmox supports LXC containers but not docker containers in its interface.

It is slightly insane that you either have to run docker containers through an LXC container or separate VM, use a separate interface to manage docker containers, or just run them on bare metal and navigate to a webpage, to use a shell to manage them, which completely negates the point of the GUI - and I know about SSH, but that's not a solution to the problem of missing functionality within the Proxmox GUI. This problem persists with using a third-party UI. I don't want to navigate to a separate application and remember a separate login to manage docker containers. It's more than likely that this 3rd party application doesn't even have support for authentication servers or logging into Linux accounts, which makes it awkward for enterprise environments. There is a better way, though Proxmox.

Therefore, I would like to request Podman container and docker-compose integration into Proxmox, similar to the functionality in the plugin available for cockpit web UI, available to view here: https://github.com/cockpit-project/cockpit-podman

The TLDR is this cockpit plugin that allows the creation, monitoring, removal and health checking of containers or container swarms through a GUI. if Proxmox could integrate these features, as well as perhaps include an app store of common applications allowing for a one-click deploy of a service, or the ability to import docker-compose files to get custom services up and running quickly, or even the ability to visually administer a Kubernetes cluster on the local machine or another proxmox host, I believe this would be extremely valuable to both non-commercial users and enterprise users and greatly expand the potential use-cases and functionality of Proxmox.

In addition, this would not replace LXC containers, as they would remain as a middle-of-the-pack option to allow easy deployment of entire software stacks or test environments without the abstraction and added complexity that comes with docker containers or the overhead that comes with full virtual machines.

Thank you for your time

 

[esi_y]

It is slightly insane that you either have to run docker containers through an LXC container or separate VM, use a separate interface to manage docker containers, or just run them on bare metal and navigate to a webpage, to use a shell to manage them, which completely negates the point of the GUI - and I know about SSH, but that's not a solution to the problem of missing functionality within the Proxmox GUI.

This problem persists with using a third-party UI. I don't want to navigate to a separate application and remember a separate login to manage docker containers. It's more than likely that this 3rd party application doesn't even have support for authentication servers or logging into Linux accounts, which makes it awkward for enterprise environments. There is a better way, though Proxmox.

There's been multiple posts of this kind over the past few months (and probably many more beyond). If you really need all those things all-in-one you are using the wrong tool. PVE is not "the way" for the described scenario ... is the answer.

 

[Neobin]

we have no plans to support a second container runtime at this point

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5612#c1

 

[esi_y]

https://bugzilla.proxmox.com/show_bug.cgi?id=5612#c1

Thanks for referencing this. While I got myself frustrated in the past when creating anything resembling a feature request to be instantly turned down, in this case, I really do not understand the rationale for asking for this. If one has a well orchestrated solution for e.g. k8s, there's no need to be considering some clustering with scheduler gymnastics, etc. It's almost like trying to run a hyper-scalable workload over what is essentially very different solution (e.g. need to have that legacy MX instance up and running, one at a time).

If it's a matter of hardware budget contraints, then KVM can hold those pods for that separate solution. I wonder what I am missing from some of these requests.

 

[LnxBil]

Thanks for referencing this. While I got myself frustrated in the past when creating anything resembling a feature request to be instantly turned down, in this case, I really do not understand the rationale for asking for this. If one has a well orchestrated solution for e.g. k8s, there's no need to be considering some clustering with scheduler gymnastics, etc. It's almost like trying to run a hyper-scalable workload over what is essentially very different solution (e.g. need to have that legacy MX instance up and running, one at a time).

If it's a matter of hardware budget contraints, then KVM can hold those pods for that separate solution. I wonder what I am missing from some of these requests.

Exactly. Most people don't understand what container orchestration is about and want a solution like portainer integrated in PVE single node.

Most of the posts I see about Docker or containerization in general are entry-level posts and there are e.g. new "solutions" available for managing all the ports you opened on a docker host in a web application, because you "need them obviously". Those people never heard of DNS and vhost based ingress routing... IMHO all those things are fine in the DIY world, yet do not fly on a enterprise solution. K8s(-based) solutions are the way to go in an enterprise setting and with the advent of automation (e.g in the early days docker-machine and others) you can automatically spin up whole clusters of machines in PVE (or any other hypervisor) to scale you k8s cluster.