Proxmox Virtual Environment

Development of Proxmox VE started in 2005 when Dietmar Maurer and Martin Maurer, two Linux developers, discovered OpenVZ had no backup tool or management GUI. KVM was also appearing at the same time in Linux, and was added shortly afterwards. The first public release took place in April 2008. It supported container and full virtualization, managed with a web-based user interface similar to other commercial offerings. ==Features==

Proxmox VE is an open-source server virtualization platform to manage two virtualization technologies: Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for virtual machines and LXC for containers - with a single web-based interface. Proxmox VE supports live migration for guest machines between nodes in the scope of a single cluster, which allows smooth migration without interrupting their services. Since PVE 7.3 there is an experimental feature for migration between unrelated nodes in different clusters. To authenticate users to the web GUI, Proxmox can use its own internal authentication database, PAM, OIDC, LDAP or Active Directory. Multi-factor authentication is also available using TOTP, WebAuthn, or YubiKey OTP. Since PVE 8.1 there is a full Software-Defined Network (SDN) stack implemented and is compatible with Secure Boot. Guest machine backups can be done using the included standalone vzdump tool. PVE can also be integrated with a separate Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) using a web GUI, or with the text-based Proxmox Backup Client application. Since PVE 8, along with the standard GUI installer, there is a semi-graphic (TUI) installer integrated into the ISO image. High-Availability Cluster Proxmox VE (PVE) can be clustered across multiple server nodes. If a Proxmox node becomes unavailable or fails, the virtual machines can be automatically moved to another node and restarted. The database and FUSE-based Proxmox Cluster file system (pmxcfs) makes it possible to perform the configuration of each cluster node via the Corosync communication stack with SQLite engine. There is also an independent tool available for rebalancing virtual machines and containers between nodes, called Prox Load Balancer (ProxLB). Virtual Appliances Proxmox VE has pre-packaged server software appliances which can be downloaded via the GUI. ==Proxmox Datacenter Manager==

At the end of 2024 it was announced that Proxmox Datacenter Manager (PDM) was being developed. Its role is to aggregate management of multiple PVE clusters or hosts, possibly thousands. First release was labelled as alpha, with beta and stable versions expected in 2025. Beta version (0.9), which has been released in September 2025, is lacking notifications and console access for nodes, but allows pulling error logs from nodes and managing updates on them. It enables simple migration of virtual machines and LXC containers between managed nodes. ==See also==