Virtualization has transformed the way businesses manage their IT infrastructure, allowing them to maximize resource efficiency, reduce hardware costs and improve scalability. While VMware has long been a leading player in this space, the market landscape is rapidly evolving today, especially after VMware’s acquisition by Broadcom. The transition has raised questions about potential cost rises and licensing flexibilities, prompting at least some organizations to actively explore other cost-effective alternatives like Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE).
In this blog, we’ll explore what Proxmox is and why its open-source nature can be a game changer for businesses. We’ll also discuss how Proxmox works, its key benefits and why it’s important to secure Proxmox workloads with a reliable third-party backup solution like Unitrends.
What is Proxmox VE?
Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE) is an open-source virtualization management platform designed for businesses that need to efficiently manage virtual machines (VMs), containers and software-defined storage (SDS) in a unified interface. Launched in 2008, Proxmox offers a complete virtualization solution, combining two major virtualization technologies — kernel-based virtual machine (KVM) and Linux containers (LXC) — under a single platform. This unique ability to handle both VMs and containers makes it a versatile tool for modern enterprise virtualization needs.
As an open-source platform, Proxmox VE allows organizations to use enterprise-grade virtualization technology without the hefty licensing fees associated with proprietary solutions. This makes it an ideal choice for businesses aiming to minimize costs while maintaining flexibility and control. Although Proxmox VE is free to use, the platform also offers paid subscription services that provide access to premium technical support, automatic updates and additional features.
What can you do with Proxmox?
Proxmox enables businesses to manage virtualized environments efficiently, offering features that cater to both small and large-scale operations. Here are some key functionalities that make Proxmox VE stand out:
VMs and containers
Proxmox VE supports both virtual machines and Linux containers, allowing businesses to run isolated applications with minimal overhead. VMs are ideal for running full-fledged operating systems, while containers are more lightweight and suitable for running applications in isolated environments. Proxmox provides an intuitive interface to manage both VMs and containers, ensuring businesses can leverage the right technology for their needs.
Storage and networks
Proxmox VE excels at managing complex storage and networking setups. With built-in support for various storage technologies, including local storage, network file system (NFS), internet small computer system interface (iSCSI) and Ceph, it offers flexibility in how data is stored and accessed. Additionally, Proxmox supports software-defined networking (SDN), allowing IT professionals to configure and manage virtual networks seamlessly. This flexibility makes it a great choice for businesses with dynamic and scalable network environments.
High-availability (HA) clusters
One of the most powerful features of Proxmox VE is its support for high-availability (HA) clusters. HA ensures that virtual machines and containers continue to run even if one of the physical nodes in the cluster fails. This is a critical feature for enterprises that require 24/7/365 uptime for mission-critical applications.
Third-party tools
Proxmox’s open-source nature means it integrates well with various third-party tools. Users can extend its functionality by integrating tools like Ansible for automation, Zabbix for monitoring and others for security and system administration. This flexibility enhances its appeal as a customizable platform.
Does Proxmox cost money?
While Proxmox VE itself is open-source and available for free, the company offers a subscription-based support model. The support packages range from Basic to Premium, each providing varying levels of access to enterprise features and updates. While free users have access to the core functionalities, paying customers benefit from enterprise-level support, ensuring faster response times and priority issue resolution. For businesses requiring guaranteed uptime and professional support, investing in a Proxmox subscription can be a wise decision.
How Proxmox works
Proxmox works by combining KVM for full virtualization and LXC for container-based virtualization under a single web-based interface. The platform runs on top of Debian Linux, providing a stable and flexible foundation for hosting VMs and containers. Users can access Proxmox through a web interface, which makes managing multiple nodes, storage and virtual networks straightforward and intuitive.
Notably, the platform’s management architecture is built on a cluster model. By connecting multiple nodes, Proxmox allows IT teams to manage a fleet of virtualized systems from a single console. Proxmox’s backup and snapshot capabilities also simplify data protection, while its integration with tools like Ceph for distributed storage enhances performance and redundancy.
Why use Proxmox?
Proxmox has several advantages, making it an attractive option for many organizations. Key benefits include:
- Cost-effectiveness: As an open-source solution, Proxmox offers a free core platform, reducing licensing costs associated with other hypervisors.
- Flexibility: Proxmox supports both virtual machines and containers, making it a versatile solution for different workloads.
- Ease of use: Its web-based interface makes managing virtualized environments straightforward, even for smaller IT teams.
- High availability and clustering: Proxmox’s HA features ensure uptime, while clustering enables scalability and resource sharing.
- Active community and support: Being open-source, Proxmox has an active community that contributes to its development and provides peer support.
Can I back up Proxmox?
Data protection is critical in any virtualized environment, and Proxmox is no exception. Businesses have two primary options for backing up their Proxmox environments.
Proxmox Backup Server
Proxmox Backup Server is the native backup solution for Proxmox VE. It allows users to back up VMs and containers incrementally, reducing the amount of data that needs to be stored. While it’s an efficient solution for smaller setups, there are some limitations. For instance, managing backups across multiple nodes can become cumbersome. It also lacks advanced features like comprehensive recovery testing, reducing its effectiveness as a comprehensive business continuity solution.
Dedicated backup solutions
For businesses seeking more advanced and comprehensive data protection, dedicated backup solutions like Unitrends Unified Backup provide superior functionalities that go over and beyond native protection. Unitrends offers features such as automated backups, instant recovery, centralized management and data deduplication to ensure data integrity, and managed disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS).
Backup best practices for Proxmox users
When managing virtual environments like Proxmox, ensuring proper data protection is critical to maintaining business continuity. Here are some essential best practices to help you protect your Proxmox environment effectively:
- Understanding RTO/RPO requirements: Determine your recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO) to align your backup policies with your business needs. Ensuring your backup strategy can meet these requirements is key to minimizing downtime and data loss in the event of a failure.
- 3-2-1 backup strategy: Follow the 3-2-1 strategy by maintaining at least three copies of your data, stored on two different media types, with one copy kept off-site or off-network. This approach helps protect against data loss from disasters, ransomware or network breaches.
- Regular recovery testing: Backing up your data is not enough — you need to know that you can recover it. Regularly test your backups by conducting recovery drills, ensuring your disaster recovery plan works when it matters most.
- Leverage Unitrends for automated and reliable backups: With Unitrends, you can automate local backups and create secure copies for disaster recovery, all while reducing the manual effort involved. Unitrends ensures your Proxmox environment is always protected, setting the stage for superior backup reliability.
Why backup Promox with Unitrends?
Unitrends provides comprehensive protection for Proxmox environments, ensuring your critical workloads are secure, recoverable and easily managed. With its robust set of features, Unitrends Backup Appliances simplify backup and disaster recovery for Proxmox users, offering reliable solutions tailored to both small and large-scale IT environments. Here’s how Unitrends secures your Proxmox workloads:
Dedicated Backup appliance: Optimize backup and recovery performance and secure backups outside of the virtual infrastructure with a dedicated backup appliance. Unitrends appliances offer all backup and replication functions, storage management, and recovery in a centralized system. Appliances are purpose-built for high performance, enabling backup tasks to run without burdening the virtual environment.
Back up Windows & Linux workloads: Unitrends supports both file-level and image-level backups for Windows and Linux workloads running on Proxmox, allowing you to protect entire volumes or specific data sets, depending on your requirements.
Recover data with ease: Whether you need to recover individual files and folders or perform a full system restore, Unitrends ensures fast and flexible recovery options:
- Files and folders: Retrieve specific data quickly when needed.
- Instant recovery: Perform instant recovery on the Unitrends appliance, ideal for local disaster recovery scenarios.
- Windows bare metal recovery: Restore an entire system with Windows bare metal recovery, minimizing downtime in the event of a system failure.
Cloud replication for immutable long-term retention: Unitrends allows you to replicate your backups to its secure, immutable cloud for long-term retention and redundancy, ensuring data is stored safely outside your primary site for disaster recovery.
Disaster Recovery as a Service (DRaaS): For assets protected by Windows image-level backups, Unitrends offers DRaaS, which guarantees your data is always recoverable in the event of a site-wide disaster.
Recovery Assurance: With Unitrends Recovery Assurance, you can automatically validate that your backups are healthy and recoverable. This testing occurs directly on the appliance, giving you peace of mind that your data is protected and ready for restoration when needed.
With Unitrends, you not only ensure reliable backups but also gain the confidence that your Proxmox environment is prepared for any disaster scenario.
Final thoughts
Proxmox Virtual Environment is a powerful, cost-effective platform that offers flexibility and control for managing virtualized workloads. Its open-source nature, combined with robust features like VM and container support, high availability and flexible storage options, make it an attractive choice for businesses of all sizes. However, to ensure uninterrupted operations and secure your critical data, integrating a reliable backup solution is essential.
Unitrends provides comprehensive backup and recovery solutions that offer seamless data protection, fast recovery and cloud replication. Don’t leave your Proxmox workloads vulnerable — book a call with Unitrends today to learn how we can help you secure and protect your virtual infrastructure.