Ubuntu Pro subscription and Proxmox

[Urbaman]

Hi,

Anyone knows what it actually means, for Ubuntu Pro:

Server with unlimited VMs* (machine/year)

Notes​

* Any of: KVM | Qemu | Boch, VMWare ESXi, LXD | LXC, Xen, Hyper-V (WSL, Multipass), VirtualBox, z/VM, Docker. All Nodes in the cluster have to be subscribed to the service in order to benefit from the unlimited VM support

So would Proxmox be supported, being qemu/KVM-based? And what does it mean "All Nodes in the cluster have to be subscribed"? How to subscribe a Proxmox (or whatever) node?

I'm also waiting for an answer from Canonical, if they even answer me.

Thanks,

 

[fabian]

Only Canonical will be able to answer that, as it relates to their subscription agreement/offering, not ours.

 

[Urbaman]

I know that, just hoped someone already had experience on the topic. Hope to find it out and be able to come back and report, as it could be a very important service for ubuntu VMs running on Proxmox.

Thank you!

 

[tismo]

I know that, just hoped someone already had experience on the topic. Hope to find it out and be able to come back and report, as it could be a very important service for ubuntu VMs running on Proxmox.

Thank you!

Let me know if you find out anything about this please

 

[prudentcircle]

I know this question has been left unanswered for a while, but to answer your question:

The simple answer is "No".

"The Ubuntu Pro license for Server with unlimited VMs" only applies if you install Ubuntu directly on a physical server.

If you want support for Ubuntu installations in VMs on top of Proxmox, then you may want to inquire Canonical about their Ubuntu Pro licenses for virtual environments. I know that this license is mainly for AWS EC2 instances. But they are also VMs after all. Why not use the same licenses for VMs on Proxmox?

 

[prudentcircle]

I came back to this post to correct myself
Someone would happen to find this post on some search engine and could be misinformed.

The link below has some answers to Tismo's question.

https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-pro-faq/34042/4

Apparently, it is possible for VMWare ESXi products to utilize Ubuntu Pro license to cover all their Ubuntu VMs.
There is a mention of Proxmox, but the wording is not so clear.

But you could ask a Canonical sales person near you and could check whether this is true and still applies to Proxmox as well.

 

[janus57]

Hi,

Per (Valid since: 2 July 2025) : https://canonical.com/legal/ubuntu-pro-description

Desktop use case: unlike Ubuntu machines operated in the datacenter or public clouds, desktop use cases require a human in front of the screen. The support for Desktop is limited to the base Ubuntu Desktop image, with the addition of packages necessary for basic authentication and networking. Desktop use cases may also involve developer tools such as MicroK8S and Multipass

Also from the same document :

Each subscription can cover one or more:
1. Physical server: The subscription is attached to a physical host. If all physical hosts in the Environment are covered, then the Ubuntu Pro subscription also covers all Ubuntu Guests on those hosts and the subscription can be attached to those Ubuntu Guests.
2. Virtual machine: The subscription is attached to an Ubuntu virtual machine or automatically attached at launch under a public cloud (Google Cloud, AWS, Azure, etc.). This subscription covers Ubuntu images running on virtual machines or in containers.
3. Desktop: The subscription is limited to a machine with Desktop use cases. It can also cover Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) and developer tools such as MicroK8s, Data Science Stack and Multipass.

Best regards,