Proxmox Virtual Environment

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.

Compute, network, and storage in a single solution

The enterprise-class features and a 100% software-based focus make Proxmox VE the perfect choice to virtualize your IT infrastructure, optimize existing resources, and increase efficiencies with minimal expense. You can easily virtualize even the most demanding of Linux and Windows application workloads, and dynamically scale computing and storage as your needs grow, ensuring that your data center adjusts for future growth.

Server Virtualization

Proxmox Virtual Environment is based on Debian GNU/Linux and uses a custom Linux Kernel. The Proxmox VE source code is free, released under the GNU Affero General Public License, v3 (GNU AGPLv3). This means that you are free to use the software, inspect the source code at any time and contribute to the project yourself. You can download the Proxmox VE ISO installer or inspect the code in the public code repository (git).

Using open-source software guarantees full access to all functionality, as well as a high level of reliability and security. We encourage everybody to contribute to the Proxmox VE project, while Proxmox, the company behind it, ensures that the product meets consistent, enterprise-class quality criteria.

Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

KVM is the industry-leading Linux virtualization technology for full virtualization. It’s a kernel module, that’s merged into the mainline Linux kernel, and it runs with near-native performance on all x86 hardware with virtualization support—either Intel VT-x or AMD-V.

With KVM you can run both Windows and Linux in virtual machines (VMs), where each VM has private, virtualized hardware: a network card, disk, graphics adapter, etc. Running several applications in VMs on a single system, enables you to save power and reduce costs, while at the same time, giving you the flexibility to build an agile and scalable software-defined data center, that meets your business demands.

Proxmox VE has included KVM support since the beginning of the project, back in 2008 (that is since version 0.9beta2).

Container-based virtualization

Container-based virtualization technology is a lightweight alternative to full machine virtualization, because it shares the host system’s kernel.

Linux Containers (LXC)

LXC is an operating-system-level virtualization environment for running multiple, isolated Linux systems on a single Linux control host. LXC works as a userspace interface for the Linux kernel containment features. Users can easily create and manage system or application containers with a powerful API and simple tools.

Central Management

To manage all tasks of your virtual data center, you can use the central, web-based management interface. The whole functionality of the web interface is also accessible via CLI or REST API, which can be used to automate tasks.

Web-based management interface

Proxmox VE is easy to use. You can do all management tasks with the integrated graphical user interface (GUI), there is no need to install a separate management tool. The central web interface is based on the ExtJS JavaScript framework and can be accessed from any modern browser. In addition to management tasks, it also provides an overview of the task history and system logs of each node. This includes running backup tasks, live migration, software-defined storage, or HA triggered activities. The multi-master tool allows you to manage your whole cluster from any node of your cluster; you don’t need a dedicated manager node.

Command line interface (CLI)

For advanced users who are used to the comfort of the Unix shell or Windows Powershell, Proxmox VE provides a command line interface to manage all the components of your virtual environment. This command line interface has intelligent tab completion and full documentation in the form of UNIX man pages.

Proxmox VE mobile

You can access Proxmox VE on mobile devices either via an Android app or via the HTML5-based mobile version of the web interface. The Proxmox VE Android app is based on the Flutter framework, and allows you to access your Proxmox VE server and manage your cluster, nodes, VMs, and containers. The Proxmox VE HTML5 mobile client enables you to manage Proxmox VE on the go, including access to the SPICE and HTML5 console. This allows you to manage VMs and containers, and view their configuration.

REST API

Proxmox VE uses a RESTful API. We chose JSON as the primary data format, and the whole API is formally defined using JSON Schema. This enables fast and easy integration for third party management tools, such as custom hosting environments.

High Availability (HA) Cluster

Proxmox Virtual Environment can scale out to a large set of clustered nodes. The cluster stack is fully integrated and ships with the default installation. The Proxmox VE HA Cluster is based on proven Linux HA technologies, providing stable and reliable HA service. The entire Proxmox VE HA Cluster can be easily configured from the integrated web-based user interface.

Unique multi-master design

To simplify the management of a cluster, you can carry out maintenance tasks cluster-wide, from any node. The integrated web-based management interface gives you a clean overview of all your KVM guests and Linux containers across your cluster. You can easily manage your VMs and containers, storage or cluster from the GUI. There is no need to install a separate, complex, and pricey management server.

Proxmox VE HA Manager

The resource manager, Proxmox VE HA Manager, monitors all VMs and containers in the cluster and automatically comes into action if one of them fails. The Proxmox VE HA Manager works out-of-the-box. Zero configuration is needed. Additionally, the watchdog-based fencing dramatically simplifies deployment.

Live/Online migration

With the integrated live/online migration feature, you can move running virtual machines from one Proxmox VE cluster node to another, without any downtime or noticeable effect from the end-user side.

Administrators can initiate this process from either the web interface or the command line. This enables you to minimize downtime, in case you need to take the host system offline for maintenance.

Proxmox Cluster File System (pmxcfs)

Proxmox VE is the only virtualization platform that uses a unique cluster file system. The Proxmox Cluster File System (pmxcfs) is a database-driven file system that enables you to synchronize configuration files across your cluster. By using Corosync, these files are replicated in real time to all cluster nodes. The file system stores all data inside a persistent database on disk, nonetheless, a copy of the data resides in RAM. The maximum storage size is currently 30 MB – more than enough to store the configuration of several thousands of VMs.

Networking

Proxmox VE’s networking capabilities enable responsive and adaptable networks that can scale according to your business needs.

Software-Defined Network (SDN)

The Software-defined Networking (SDN) feature allows Proxmox VE to manage advanced networking configurations and multitenancy setups across Proxmox VE clusters. Possible use cases range from an isolated private network on each individual node to complex overlay networks across multiple Proxmox VE clusters on different locations.

It is applicable to all sizes of networks, from a simple routed NAT setup, traditional separation into 802.1q VLANs, to features like QinQ, VXLAN tunneling, and BGP-based EVPN infrastructures.

Read more about Software-Defined Network (SDN)

Linux Networking Stack

For simple setups, Proxmox VE provides flexible network configuration options for local nodes. A bridged network model is used to provide seamless connectivity between virtualized environments and the external network. Bridges are comparable to physical network switches, but implemented as software on the Proxmox VE host.

For additional flexibility, you can set up VLANs, create a bond interface, and manage basic network routing.

Read more on the Proxmox VE Network Configuration

Flexible Storage Options

The Proxmox VE storage model is very flexible. VM images can either be stored on one or several local storage devices or on shared storage like NFS and SAN. There are no limits. You can configure as many storages as you like, and can use all storage technologies available for Debian GNU/Linux. The benefit of storing VMs on shared storage is the ability to live-migrate running machines without any downtime.

In the Proxmox VE web interface, you can add the following storage types:

Local storage types

LVM Group
Directory (storage on an existing filesystem)
ZFS

Read more on the Proxmox VE Storage Model

Software-Defined Storage with Ceph

Ceph is an open-source distributed object store and file system designed to provide excellent performance, reliability and scalability. Proxmox Virtual Environment fully integrates Ceph, giving you the ability to run and manage Ceph storage directly from any of your cluster nodes.

Ceph provides two types of storage, RADOS Block Device (RBD) and CephFS. An RBD provides block level storage, for content such as disk images and snapshots. CephFS implements a POSIX-compliant filesystem using a Ceph storage cluster to store its data.

Benefits of Ceph with Proxmox VE

Easy setup and management through the GUI and CLI
Self-healing
Scalable to the exabyte level
Setup pools with different performance and redundancy characteristics
Runs on economical commodity hardware

Firewall

The built-in Proxmox VE Firewall provides an easy way to protect your IT infrastructure. The firewall is completely customizable, allowing complex configurations via the GUI or CLI.

You can set up firewall rules for all hosts inside a cluster, or define rules for virtual machines and containers only. Features like firewall macros, security groups, IP sets and aliases help to make that task easier.

Distributed firewall

While all configuration is stored in the cluster file system, the iptables-based firewall runs on each cluster node, and thus provides full isolation between virtual machines. The distributed nature of this system also provides much higher bandwidth than a centralized firewall solution.

IPv4 and IPv6

The firewall has full support for IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 support is fully transparent, and we filter traffic for both protocols by default. Thus, there is no need to maintain a different set of rules for IPv6.

Proxmox Backup Server Integration

Proxmox Backup Server is our enterprise-class backup solution, that is capable of backing up VMs, containers, and physical hosts. Support for this is fully integrated into Proxmox VE, meaning you can seamlessly back up and restore guests using the same common interface that the other storage types use.

These backups are incremental, only transferring newly changed data over the network. This is highly beneficial in terms of network bandwidth and backup job run time. Data can also be easily encrypted on the client side, so that your backed up data is inaccessible to attackers.

Live-restore

Restoring large backups can take a long time and be a major source of downtime in case of disaster. However, for VM backups that are stored on a Proxmox Backup Server, the live-restore feature minimizes this downtime, allowing the VM to start as soon as the restore begins. In this case, the data is continuously copied in the background, prioritizing chunks that the VM is actively accessing.

Single-file restore

Oftentimes, only a single file or directory is needed from a backup. From the Proxmox VE web interface, you can securely search for and restore individual files or directories from a VM or container backup.