This has been done before but last I saw was in 2017…things have changed with ESXi, Citrix, and Proxmox etc…
I’d love to hear what people use for work and or prefer for home.
I’m getting comfortable with Proxmox, but getting ready to try Windows Server 2016 (is compatible with my Dell T320), VMware ESXi. I may add another drive for citrix. I’m just wondering what people like and why.
0 voters
I enjoy the ease of proxmox, but I wish it used a newer kernel.
I havent used ESXi at home since version 5.0
I’m fully on board he unraid hype train
I will clarify… I guess for the purposes of running a few VM’s (IE Plex, Pi-hole or other useful home applications) or other great uses for a personal server.
That’s one I’ll have to look at… I guess TreNAS Core should be on there too as it has VM capabilities
I use oVirt
I do the VM thing in unraid for these kinds of services but I’m coming around to the containerization side of things.
I need to add that too…lol I’ll have to redo the poll! I forgot all these…
Any reason for everyone’s choices? Ease of use? Pass through compatability? Hardware compatibility? Security? Backup options? Tools avalible?
I like unraid because you wont find anything as simple and straight forward as it for installing containers and VMs.
It takes the capabilities of kvm/qemu and gives you a virtualbox level of interface.
Theres a large community of users generating “apps” for it which are one click install style docker containers.
Theres an addon for ZFS if you’re in to that.
I also have a backup server, it runs proxmox, which I would say is another viable option but not nearly as simplified.
There are some downsides to it, as there are to any of these options. The strengths outweigh all of them to me.
A couple years ago, I spent a good deal of time pouring over DISA STIG for RHEL 7. Because of that time investment, I tend to stay in RHEL ecosystem. I have scripts for onboarding/securing it and am generally comfortable using it (CentOS at least).
Additionally, oVirt is the closest alternative to vSphere/ESXi that I’ve used. ESXi is arguably the best virtualization platform, but of course, it is proprietary and expensive. Deploying a cluster in oVirt is pretty easy, especially since they provide an appliance ISO. The network is kind of quirky, but not too bad.
It’s impressively stable (in my experience) and feature-rich, especially considering it’s basically qemu/kvm glued to a lot of other things with a bunch of python and ansible.
zfs on unraid (or proxmox) is cool, especially for a single host, but zfs + virt is a huge memory demand. I’d rather have zfs on dedicated storage hardware and provide block via iscsi or gluster.
Wow, Nice Interface. Does seem to make things easy. I have the same motherboard in my other server. I have two currently. One based on the X470D4U and then a Dell T320 (soon to be T420) I recently got.
78 cents have been deposited into your account…
you can take the day off now shill.
shut up nerd
KVM/QEMU directly, proxmox is nice but its just a fancy UI built onto KVM anyway, why not just use the real thing on any distro of choice.
This might solve the issue of using Proxmox on newer hardware, or being able to use it in the majorly changed Debian 12… or is it not compatable with that OS? I cant remember what changed, but I know all the workarounds and scripts (Might be wrong terminology here) or was it the kernel that was changed. I cant remember. I’ve been reading ALOT.
I use virt-manager for QEMU/KVM. I’ve poked my nose into oVirt but have not really used it.
I use either Xen or QEMU. There are various “easy mode” choices available.
If you want to be a real soydev, use docker or kubernetes.
Well I do want to learn as much as I can so QEMU might be a viable option. Although, I’m not very experienced code wise.
I will say after using the CLI with proxmox so long using TrueNAS as a file server seems really easy compared to setting up a SMB share manually.
Also, ESXi seems very easy to set up VM’s and get them connected.
I’ll probably play around with all of them at some point, and read up a bit. I got all day everyday to do it. lol
It does seem docker and containers seem to be the way things are headed. IMHO
If you can understand documentation, you’ll be fine. QEMU doesn’t need code, really, just configuration.
You might want libvirt as a supporting tool for QEMU.
Yeah, truenas is not a good tool for virtualization. Bhyve integration just isn’t there yet.
I choose to not support VMWare due to their violation of GPL re: Linux kernel. If you want to use it, it’s a powerful tool, but I’m not in favor of it.
I agree there. I am considering using it as a central storage manager. It is a bit easier to glance at the health of my pool than typing zpool status all the time. However I am sure there are many options for monitoring a zpool thats natively on Proxmox or Debian. I haven’t even been able to set up email alerts the way I want yet. Or at all really…
I know there is history there. I will say after exploring VMware, it is nice, has a lot of integration with my Dell system, but my hangup is to really use it I will have to pay annually for it. It feels like windows (which I’m attempting to move away from almost entirely-as I work out kinks for gaming) I don’t think I’m up for that. I can afford it, but why when there are so many opensource options that work great?
Thats my thinking at least.
I’m rethinking my setup now. Kind of wishing I had invested in a Dell Power Vault or similar for central storage.
