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Re: What's the most Accessible Linux VM Server Platform?



Hi all,

On Sun, Jul 09, 2023 at 10:31:29AM -0400, Al Puzzuoli wrote:
>I currently have a VMWare ESXI  host machine in my home lab. I’m considering
>alternative platforms and happy to experiment, but also don’t want to get part
>way down a rabbit hole and then realize I’m suddenly dealing with a bunch of
>hard to surmount accessibility issues.
>
>I’m also unsure about performing OS installs . is it possible to get audio over
>a VNC connection or something?
>
>The most popular solution seems to be Proxmox. However from what I can tell,
>There doesn’t seem to be an accessible Proxmox install option. I understand it
>can be installed over top of an existing Debian system but then you don’t get
>ZFS. Not sure how much that matters.

Thats not true. I am using Proxmox at work and we have installed it with ZFS 
on Debian. At least the data store for the VMs is on ZFS, not the root 
filesystem, but thats OK for us.

The Proxmox webinterface is not very useable, but all things regarding VMs 
and containers can be done via commandline when login to via ssh to one of 
your VM cluster nodes. Also everything regardin the vonfiguration of a 
Proxmox cluster itself can be done via commands or by editing textbased 
configfiles. It sometimes needs a bit more searching around to find the 
right commands, but I've really had no situation so far where I was not able 
to do my work or to perform the tasks to setup and configure VMs, configure 
replication, migrate VMs from one host to another, configure data stroes and 
so on.

We only run virtual machines with linux on our cluster, but I am very sure I 
will also be able to get Windows VMs up and running. I'd create such a VM 
localy with qemu / kvm and do the initial setup and then I'd transfer the 
image file of the VM to the cluster and import it into a VM.

If you need a cluster solution like Proxmox or if qemu / kvm is enough for 
your needs depdends on what you want. In my opinion Proxmox only makes sense 
when high availability is needed for the systems you need to run. If you 
do not need HA just using kvm / qemu is fine. And if you like to run pihole 
or similar applications you could use docker and run many of this kind of 
application on one host / vm only, that even easier.

If you tell more about what you like to achive and what are your needs and 
what applications you like to run on what operating systems I can tell you 
more about what software you can use.

In my daily job I do many things with virtual machines, linux containers or 
docker with or without Proxmox, on our Proxmox clusters or localy, so having 
more infos on your requirements can be helpfull to give better answers.
Ciao,

  Schoepp


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