Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open-sourceserver virtualization management platform. It is a Debian-based Linux distribution with a modified Ubuntu LTS kernel and allows deployment and management of virtual machines and containers. Proxmox VE includes a web console and command-line tools, and provides a REST API for third-party tools. Two types of virtualization are supported: container-based with LXC, and full virtualization with KVM. It comes with a bare-metal installer and includes a web-based management interface. Proxmox VE is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3. The name Proxmox itself has no meaning, and was chosen because the domain name was available.
History
Development of Proxmox VE started when Dietmar Maurer and Martin Maurer, two Linux developers, found out OpenVZ had no backup tool and no management GUI. KVM was appearing at the same time in Linux, and was added shortly afterwards. The first public release took place in April 2008, and the platform quickly gained traction. It was one of the few platforms providing out-of-the-box support for container and full virtualization, managed with a web-based user interface similar to commercial offerings.
Features
Proxmox VE is a powerful open-source server virtualization platform to manage two virtualization technologies - KVM for virtual machines and LXC for containers - with a single web-based interface. It also integrates out-of-the-box-tools for configuring high availability between servers, software-defined storage, networking, and disaster recovery.
Proxmox VE supports local storage with LVM group, directory and ZFS, as well as network storage types with iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, GlusterFS, CEPH.
High-availability cluster
Proxmox VE can be clustered across multiple server nodes. Since version 2.0, Proxmox VE offers a high availability option for clusters based on the Corosync communication stack. Individual virtual servers can be configured for high availability, using the Red Hat cluster suite. If a Proxmox node becomes unavailable or fails the virtual servers can be automatically moved to another node and restarted. The database- and FUSE-based Proxmox Cluster filesystem makes it possible to perform the configuration of each cluster node via the Corosync communication stack.
Live migration
At least since 2012, in a HA cluster, live virtual machines can be moved from one physical host to another without downtime. Since Proxmox VE 1.0, released 29.10.2008 KVM and OpenVZ live migration is supported.
