Proxmox delivers its software-defined datacenter contender and VMware escape hatch
New ‘Datacenter Manager’ manages VMs across multiple sites or clusters
Open source virtualization project Proxmox has delivered the first full and stable release of its Datacenter Manager product, making it a more viable alternative as a private cloud platform.
Proxmox’s Virtual Environment, a platform that hosts virtual machines and containers, and includes software-defined storage and networking, has become increasingly prominent in recent years as Broadcom’s VMware business unit focused on large enterprise customers. Proxmox has become a popular alternative to VMware for organizations whose needs don’t go far beyond basic server virtualization. Even one VMware partner The Register recently spoke to decided Proxmox was sufficient for some internal workloads it felt did not need all the features of VMware’s Cloud Foundation platform.
Proxmox, however, has bigger ambitions and on Thursday started chasing them by releasing a new product called Datacenter Manager that offers centralized management for multiple, independent Proxmox-based environments.
As explained in Proxmox’s launch announcement, the product “… provides an aggregated view of all your connected nodes and clusters and is designed to manage complex and distributed infrastructures, from local installations to globally scaled data centers.”
Datacenter Manager also enables migration of VMs across clusters without having to manually reconfigure networks. That’s a trick VMware invented decades ago and has since become table stakes for serious private cloud players.
Other features also help to make Proxmox a contender, such as VM fleet management tools that allow admins to identify VMs that need patches and arrange installation, lifecycle management for VMs, and a dashboard that allows a view of all hosts and the workloads they host – and their status.
Bardia Khalilifar, CEO of Australian software vendor Multiportal which supports Proxmox with its cloud management platform, welcomed the debut of Datacenter Manager.
"I think it is fantastic that Proxmox has released this," he said, as it will help enable service providers to manage multiple Proxmox rigs on behalf of their clients. He said the product "opens the floodgates" for wider Proxmox adoption, especially across multiple datacenters and for use in private clouds.
Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, the entity that develops Proxmox products and makes them available under the GNU AGPLv3 license, wrote Datacenter Manager in Rust. That’s no guarantee of strong security, but it’s a decent start. Proxmox’s developers based the platform on Debian Trixie 13.2, using version 6.17 of the Linux kernel, and with ZFS 2.3.4 included.
Datacenter Manager downloads are available here. If you take it for a spin, let us know how it goes! ®