[HN Gopher] Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available
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       Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available
        
       Author : speckx
       Score  : 112 points
       Date   : 2025-12-04 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.proxmox.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.proxmox.com)
        
       | unethical_ban wrote:
       | I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine
       | running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful,
       | VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration,
       | well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen.
       | 
       | I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low
       | end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a
       | datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nodes.
       | 
       | Question: Does anyone know large businesses that utilize proxmox
       | for datacenter operations?
        
         | holysoles wrote:
         | Both my current org and previous org (large) have mentioned it
         | many times as an option, but both ended up choosing other
         | commercial alternatives: HyperV and XenServer.
         | 
         | I think the missing datacenter manager was causing a lot of
         | hesitation for those that don't manage via automation
        
         | NegativeK wrote:
         | > I'd need to build twice the nodes.
         | 
         | Why twice the nodes? The manager is optional -- but do you need
         | multiples?
         | 
         | Also, when I looked into clusters (that I haven't implemented,)
         | I did see qdevices. It's a way to have a cheap and weak third
         | node just to break ties.
        
         | twiclo wrote:
         | I set it up for my small company 5 years ago. Couldn't be
         | happier with it honestly.
        
         | treesknees wrote:
         | The company I work for is migrating a few hundred VMWare hosts
         | to Proxmox due to licensing and cost considerations. In our
         | case, since most of the hosts are not clustered, the migration
         | process is quite straightforward. The built-in migration tool
         | proves to be exceptionally effective.
        
         | diederikm wrote:
         | Yes! In this great video from level1techs Wendel walks around
         | in a brand new ai gpu datacenter, an engineer tells what they
         | use for all the normal stuff :-)
         | 
         | Inside the Modern Data Center! SuperClusters at Applied Digital
         | https://youtu.be/zcwqTkbaZ0o?si=V2uPScjyN_sJcIh7&t=696
        
         | throw0101d wrote:
         | > _I 've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some
         | low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a
         | datacenter controller._
         | 
         | You can set up a cluster to play with multiple nodes without
         | the just-announced PDM 1.0. Or you can use PDM to manage three
         | stand alone nodes.
         | 
         | If you want to do both, perhaps a 3-node cluster plus a 1-node
         | stand alone with a PDM 'overlay'. So just a +1 versus a 2x.
        
         | k_bx wrote:
         | We run proxmox on a bunch of hardware servers, but for
         | "homelab" we use Ubuntu on ZFS + Incus cluster. What I look at
         | is IncusOS: a radically new approach to base cluster OS: no
         | SSH, no configuration. So far it looks too radical, but
         | eventually I see that as the only way to go for somebody who
         | has a "zoo" of servers behind Tailscale: just base OS which
         | upgrades safely, immutable and encrypted, without any unique
         | configuration. The vision looks beautiful.
        
         | gerdesj wrote:
         | I run roughly 30 PVE hosts across several customers (all ex-
         | VMware). Few more to migrate.
         | 
         | You can migrate a three node cluster from VMware to PVE using
         | the same hardware if you have a proper n+1 cluster.
         | 
         | iSCSI SANs don't (yet) do snapshots on PVE. I did take a three
         | node Dell + flash SAN and an additional temporary box with
         | rather a lot of RAM and disc (ZFS) and took the SSDs out of the
         | SAN and whistled up a Ceph cluster on the hosts.
         | 
         | Another customer, I simply migrated their elderly VMware based
         | cluster (a bit of a mess with an Equallogic) to a smart new set
         | of HPEs with flash on board - Ceph cluster. That was about two
         | years ago. I patched it today, as it turns out. Zero downtime.
         | 
         | PVE's high availability will auto evacuate a box when you put
         | it into maintenance mode, so you get something akin to VMware's
         | DRS out of the box, for free.
         | 
         | PDM is rather handy for the likes of me that have loads of
         | disparate systems down the end of VPNs. You do have to take
         | security rather seriously and it has things like MFA built in
         | out of the box, as does PVE itself.
         | 
         | PVE and PDM support ACME too and have done for years. VMware
         | ... doesn't.
         | 
         | I could go on somewhat about what I think of "Enterprise" with
         | a capital E software. I won't but I was a VMware fanboi for
         | over 20 years. I put up with it now. I also look after quite a
         | bit of Hyper-V (I was clearly a very bad boy in a former life).
        
       | tw04 wrote:
       | This looks like exactly what everyone wanted before VMWare
       | decided to release that bloated pig named vcloud director.
       | 
       | If it scales and the proxmox team can grow their support
       | organization, they'll have a real shot at capturing significant
       | vmware marketshare.
        
         | throwaway270925 wrote:
         | This seems to be more of a VCenter counterpart, vcloud director
         | was more about the multi tenancy (and multi cloud).
         | 
         | But a great step nonetheless! Hope they grow too.
        
       | throw0101d wrote:
       | Another VM platform I've heard good things about (but not used
       | personally) is XCP-ng:
       | 
       | * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XCP-ng
       | 
       | (There's also OpenStack.)
        
         | MurkyLabs wrote:
         | I've heard good things about XCP-ng as well and tried it out at
         | home and proxmox seems much easier to use out of the box. Not
         | saying XCP-ng is bad just that it wasn't as intuitive to me as
         | proxmox was when we were moving away from vmware
        
         | NexRebular wrote:
         | And there's also Triton[0] and vanilla SmartOS[1] it's based on
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/TritonDataCenter/triton
         | 
         | [1] https://docs.smartos.org/
        
       | throwaway270925 wrote:
       | Finally, what we have all been waiting for!
       | 
       | Though I dont quite get the requirement for a hardware server,
       | wouldn't it make much more sense to run this in a VM? Or is this
       | just worded poorly?
        
         | LorenDB wrote:
         | You can absolutely run it in a VM. I spun up an instance the
         | other day in a VM and have had no problems.
        
         | unethical_ban wrote:
         | I assume you want to run it outside the clusters it manages.
        
       | jmward01 wrote:
       | I hope this is a signal that a third cloud option, BYOC (build
       | your own cloud), is finally becoming practical. Yes, the physical
       | management of racks is a massive part of managing a cloud but the
       | software stack is honestly why AWS and the like are winning much
       | of the time, at least for the small use cases I have been a part
       | of. I priced out some medium servers and the cost of buying
       | enough for load plus extras for fail over, and host them, was
       | -way- under AWS and other cloud vendors (these were GPU loads)
       | but the management of them was the issue. 'just spin up an
       | instance...' is such a massive enabler for ideas. Something that
       | gives me a viable software stack to build my own cloud on easily
       | is a huge win for abandoning the major cloud vendors. Keep it
       | coming!
        
         | sekh60 wrote:
         | What about OpenStack, or even CloudStack?
        
           | written-beyond wrote:
           | PLEASE DON'T DOWN VOTE ME TO HELL THIS IS A DISCLAIMER I AM
           | JUST SHARING WHAT I'VE READ I AM NOT CLAIMING THEM AS FACTS.
           | 
           | ...ahem...
           | 
           | When I was researching about this a few years ago I read some
           | really long in-depth scathing posts about Open stack. One of
           | them explicitly called it a childish set of glued together
           | python scripts that fall apart very quickly when you get off
           | the happy path.
           | 
           | OTH opinions on Proxmox were very measured.
        
             | 0x457 wrote:
             | > When I was researching about this a few years ago I read
             | some really long in-depth scathing posts about Open stack.
             | One of them explicitly called it a childish set of glued
             | together python scripts that fall apart very quickly when
             | you get off the happy path.
             | 
             | And according to every ex-Amazoner I've ment: the core of
             | AWS is a bunch of Perl scripts glued together
        
           | chrisandchris wrote:
           | I think the main selling point for SME (wtih a small IT team)
           | is that Proxmox is very easy to setup (download iso, install
           | debian, ready to go). CloudStack seems to require a lot of
           | work just to get it running: https://docs.cloudstack.apache.o
           | rg/en/latest/quickinstallati...
           | 
           | Maybe I'm wrong - but where I am from, companies with less
           | than 500 employees are like 95% of the workforce of the
           | country. That's big enough for a small cluster (in-
           | house/colocation), but to small for something bigger.
        
             | jmward01 wrote:
             | Yeah. The keys here are 'easy' and 'I can play with it at
             | home first'. Let's be honest, being able to throw together
             | a bunch of old dead boxes and put proxmox on them in a
             | weekend is a game changer for a learning curve.
        
       | fragmede wrote:
       | So why not kubernetes?
        
         | MrDrMcCoy wrote:
         | K8S doesn't scale nearly as well due to etcd and latency
         | sensitivity. Multi-site K8S is messy. The whole K8S model is
         | overly-complex for what almost any org actually needs. Proxmox,
         | Incus, and Nomad are much better designed for ease of use and
         | large scale.
         | 
         | That said, I still run K8S in my homelab. It's an
         | (unfortunately) important skill to maintain, and operators for
         | Ceph and databases are worth the up-front trouble for ease of
         | management and consumption.
        
           | kazen44 wrote:
           | multi-site k8s is also very "interesting" if you encounter
           | anything like variable latency in your network paths. etcd is
           | definitly not designed for use across large distances. (more
           | then a 10km single mode fiber path).
        
       | merb wrote:
       | sadly I hoped they add:
       | 
       | > Off-site replication of guests for manual recovery in case of
       | datacenter failure.
       | 
       | which would've been an actual killer feature
        
         | jefurii wrote:
         | You can use ZFS to replicate your VMs. IIRC each VM has its own
         | ZFS dataset. There's probably a config file somewhere that you
         | also need to replicate.
        
       | retrochameleon wrote:
       | Unreadable webpage on mobile. Text goes off the screen, and if
       | you zoom out, the overflown text is on a white background.
        
         | elashri wrote:
         | I use this bookmarklet on phone when I encounter a page like
         | that and it usually make things better.
         | 
         | javascript:(function(){document.head.insertAdjacentHTML('before
         | end','<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-
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         | It does three things, It adds a viewport meta tag for a proper
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       | cachius wrote:
       | Some screenshots would be nice.
        
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       (page generated 2025-12-04 23:01 UTC)