I’d expected this but it still sucks.
There are two kinds of datacenter admins, those who aren’t using VMWare, and those who are migrating away from VMWare.
Regrettably, there is currently no substitute product offered.
I really don’t think you regret a God damn thing broadcom.
If you’re already running windows, hyper-v. theres proxmox, and tons of others. So they are mistaken. 🤣
They mean that they aren’t offering another solution.
I know, but this is the way I read it when they claim to give no option.
All of them not equate in same league. Do you know any type 1 free supervises out there? Xen probably.
Proxmox, Xen, hyper-v are all considered type 1 as far as I’m aware.
Proxmox
I assume what you’re looking for specifically here is a complete platform that you can install on bare-metal, not just the actual hypervisor itself. In which case consider any of these:
- Proxmox
- XCP-NG
- Windows Hyper-V Server Core (basically Windows Server Nano with Hyper-V)
- Any Linux distro running KVM/QEMU - Add Cockpit if you need a web interface, or use Virt-Manager, either directly or over X-forwarding
Any Linux distro running KVM/QEMU - Add Cockpit if you need a web interface, or use Virt-Manager, either directly or over X-forwarding
No need for X forwarding, you can connect Virt-Manager to a remote system that has libvirt,
This is true, but not everyone gets to use a linux system as their main desktop at work. I’m not aware of a windows version of virt-manager, but if that exists it would be fucking rad.
KVM makes proxmox type 1
I’m not sure why you’re getting down voted, you’re right. I’m not sure if anyone would run Proxmox for their enterprise hypervisor? I mean HyperV is okay. Slim pickings for big orgs. I know there’s Nutanix, but most folks are moving to the big three for VMs and hosting.
I am running proxmox at a moderately sized corp. The lack of a real support contract almost kills it, which is too bad because it is a decent product
RIP VMware.
Broadcom prefers to milk the top 500 customers with unreasonable fees rather than bother with the rest of the world. They know that nobody with a brain would intentionally start a new datacenter with VMware solutions
Not anymore, thats for damn sure.
It’s really sad, they used to be amazing and the goto for running Linux VMs on back in the day. Still haven’t seen anyone do hardware pass through as well.
When big players like AWS are running KVM and XCP-NG, yeah. VMware is basically the also-ran at this point.
Well dang, I guess that “learn about proxmox” line on my to-do list just moved a little higher. For the most part, I’ve enjoyed using ESXi and am sad to see it go.
FWIW, I run proxmox at home, and I friggin love it. It’s really not hard at all.
I like Unraid… It has a UI for VMs and LXC containers like Proxmox, but it also has a pretty good Docker UI. I’ve got most things running on Docker on my home server, but I’ve also got one VM (Windows Server 2022 for Blue Iris) and two LXC containers. (LXC support is a plugin; it doesn’t come out-of-the-box)
Docker with Proxmox is a bit weird, since it doesn’t actually support Docker and you have to run Docker inside an LXC container or VM.
I’m in the market for a nas or thinclient for these kinds of things, an upgrade for my RPi Home Assistant.
I’m stuck at hardware at the moment and think a cheap 2bay NAS is probably the way to go. My concern is that I won’t be able to run all the things on a NAS mainly because I’m clueless. This community talks in maths (as Radiohead say) so half the time I’m trying to decipher all the LXCs and other acronyms.
Anyway, I think I need to learn PROXMOX or Unraid so your comment has me interested.
My question to you is this: since your server is plugged in via ethernet, can you access the Windows VM via web interface? Or does it require a screen, keyboard, mouse, etc?
I think I’m gonna be running HA in a VM, along with Adguard and maybe LMS in docker containers, then probably a Windows VM for Arr and Plex. I assume all these things will have their own port but I’m just not 100% about the actual Windows VM
I run a couple of containers on my lenovo mini pc. I have proxmox installed on bare metal and then one VM for truenas, one for docker containers and one for home assistant OS.
For me the limiting factor is definitely RAM. I have 20GB (because the machine came with a 2x4GB configuration and I bought a single 16GB upgrade stick) and am constantly at ~98% utilization.
To be fair, about half of that is eaten up by TrueNAS alone due to ZFS.
The point I’m trying to make is basically make sure you can put enough RAM into your machine. Some NAS have soldered memory you won’t be able to upgrade. The CPU performance you need highly depends on what you want to do.
In my case the only CPU intensive task I have is media transcoding which can often be offloaded to dedicated bardware like intel quicksync. The only annoying exception is hardware transcoding of x265 media which is apparently only supported from intel 7th gen and upwards processors and I have a 6th gen i5… Or maybe I configured something wrong. No clue
Edit: I wrote that after reading the first half of your comment. Regarding connecting a screen, I think I had one connected once to set up proxmox. Afterwards I just log into the proxmox web interface. If required I can use that to get a GUI session of each VM as well.
Hey no you answered a bunch of questions I had there. So I’m looking for an i7 with lots of RAM. Thanks that’s excellent
Just to be sure there isn’t a misunderstanding. With 7th gen I mean any intel iX-7xxx processor or higher.
The first (or first 2) numbers of the second part of the processor name determine the generation of the processor. The number immediately following the i just denotes the performance tier within the processors own generation
Thanks for the correction. I’ve lurked in here and the Reddit one back before the time we don’t talk about, but I have no clue when it comes to hardware. I got given a PC to game on and was talking to my mate about buying server bits, and mentioned getting i7 processors. He told me it would be more powerful than my gaming rig because that’s only i5s.
This makes more sense. So I can get an i3-7xxx quad core mini PC and try upgrade the RAM and storage.
I have a bunch of ram sticks in a bottom drawer and some HDDs I’ve never managed to boot yet, so I have things to play with… I just don’t know what they are or if they work.
I love to tinker though. This all sounds like lots of fun
I’d recommend building your own server rather than buying an off-the-shelf NAS. The NAS will have limited upgrade options - usually, if you want to make it more powerful in the future, you’ll have to buy a new one. If you build your own, you can freely upgrade it in the future - add more memory (RAM), make it faster by replacing the CPU with a better one, etc.
If you want a small one, the Asus Prime AP201 is a pretty nice (and affordable!) case.
I’ve just learned about converting docker containers to lxc natively, so that’s my next project.
I moved from lxc to docker. Much easier to manage.
I personally prefer Docker over LXC since the containers are essentially immutable. You can completely delete and recreate a container without causing issues. All your data is stored outside the container in a Docker volume, so deleting the container doesn’t delete your volume. Your
docker-composedescribes the exact state of the containers (as long as you use version numbers rather than tags likelatest)Good Docker containers are “distroless” which means it only contains the app and the bare minimum dependencies for the app to run, without any extraneous OS stuff in it. LXC containers aren’t as light since as far as I know they always contain an OS.
I’m with you for the most part, but I’m slowly moving over to podman over docker for security and simplicity. LXC is convenient for proxmox, and you can make a golden snapshot, store your data and config in a bind mount, and replicate some of docker’s features. Lately, I run a privileged lxc with rootless podman running dockge. Seems to work well for now.
Along with the termination of perpetual licensing, Broadcom has also decided to discontinue the Free ESXi Hypervisor, marking it as EOGA (End of General Availability).
Wiktionary: Adjective perpetual (not comparable) Lasting forever, or for an indefinitely long time.
Hello ProxMox here I come!
They’re terminating in the sense that they won’t sell it anymore. They’re not breaking the licensing they’ve already sold (mostly, there was some fuckery with activating licensing they sold through third parties)
Sort of. The activation license will work as long as you have it. They won’t renew support though, which effectively kills it when the support contract runs out.
You won’t be able to upgrade to new versions when the support contract runs out, but you can install updates to the existing version as long as updates are made for it. This has always been the lifecycle for perpetual licensing. It’s good forever, but at a certain point it becomes a security risk to continue using. The difference here is they won’t sell you another perpetual license when the lifecycle is up.
Really glad I made the transition from ESXi to Docker containers about a year ago. Easier to manage too and lighter on resources. Plus upgrades are a breeze. Should have done that years ago…
I need full on segregated machines sometimes though. I’ve got stuff that only runs in Win98 or XP (old radio programming software).
Might be time to look into Proxmox. There’s a fun weekend project for you!
Do you work for a railroad? That sounds too familiar.
Lol no, just old radios. My point is just that my requirements are pretty widely varied.
I’m curious what radio software you use that has these requirements?
Old Motorolas, they really hate users.
I agree with the other poster; you should look into proxmox. I migrated from ESXi to proxmox 7-8 years ago or so, and honestly its been WAY better than ESXi. The migration process was pretty easy too, i was able to bring over the images from ESXi and load them directly into proxmox.
If you’re running a basic linux install you can use KVM for some VMs. Or use Proxmox for a good ESXi replacement.
XCP-ng or Proxmox if you need a bare metal hypervisor. Both open source, powerful, mature, and have large communities with lots of helpful documentation.
I think you can migrate ESXi VMs directly to XCP-ng. I have moved onto it about 6 months ago and it has been solid. Steep learning curve, but really great once you get the hang of it, and enterprise grade if you need stuff like HA clustering and complex virtual networking solutions.
I managed to migrate all mine to libvirt when I dumped esxi. They dropped support for the old opteron I was running at the time, so I couldn’t upgrade to v7. Welp, Fedora Server does just as well and I’ve been moving the VM hosted services into containers anyway.
Ofc… well, we’ll see what IBM does with RedHat. Probably something like this eventually. They simply can’t help themselves.
The most important thing for everyone to remember is that if you don’t fully own the thing such that you can install and run it without asking permission, or if it isn’t simply free and open source, then it can go away at any time.
Oh no!
Anyway…
Been on Proxmox for a couple of years and it’s been great.
Yay… Capitalism…
Its not capitalism it just is business. No one is making you use it.
Sucks but not surprising. Broadcom has a history of doing things like this, ugh. Even with their paid products they jack up the price so much that the only customers that stick around are the business enterprise types that are locked in & can’t easily migrate for various reasons.
I’m shocked I tell you; simply shocked…
Bummer. Oh well, good thing I’m learning proxmox eh.
I wonder what’s the future of vmware player
Not bright…
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
Fewer Letters More Letters ESXi VMWare virtual machine hypervisor HA Home Assistant automation software ~ High Availability LTS Long Term Support software version LXC Linux Containers NAS Network-Attached Storage Plex Brand of media server package RPi Raspberry Pi brand of SBC SBC Single-Board Computer ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity
8 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 4 acronyms.
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High Availability not Home Assistant.
Depends which community you ask 🤣. It was definitely high availability first though.
