Sorry to derail the conversation, but question for vl1969: How do you like proxmox vs. ESXi? I'm currently running ESXi, think that I want to move to proxmox, but haven't had a chance yet to do so. Should I go that way 100%?
I am not sure if I am the right person to ask.
I never used ESXi except in small test setup. never in production environment either.
my job virtualization choice is Hyper-V, which a side from licensing is pretty good.
ESXi has it uses and within professional env. it is a good choice as far as I can tell.
home I am not sure though. my reasons are ,
a bit expensive licence cost if you need/want pro features.
Hardware compatibility is very demanding.
no option to use software raid is desired.
limited choice of file systems for the host.
very difficult (at least to me) hardware management.
limited options for UI. even though I know that free version has webUI but it some what limited the last I checked. and the vConsole requires windows which I do not have at home.
terrible choice of blacklisting the hardware at will, with no regards to users needs/wants
don't' get me wrong ESXi has it good side too.
very good support for PCI pass-through, providing your host hardware is up to par
even limited WebUI is still very useful for basic day to day stuff.
this is all IMHO and should, be taken with a grain of salt as I said before my only exposure to ESXi was a small test instal with limited interaction. most of the other things are plucked from various forums thread I came across during my research.
now with Proxmox I am still in test mode as well but I have been building out couple of setups for my home,
a pfSense router replacement being one of them and my next vm server and file server will be on Proxmox VE 4.
I like it because it is a Debian distro, so I can install anything I need and it supports a lot of hardware old and new out of the box.
I have a choice on how I install and set it all up.
very flexible in term of management options.
Proxmox UI is good but in some areas it still lucking but can be supplemented with webmin. so I essentially can do everything from within a nice WebUI without touching CLI if I choose to.
the LXC containers are a good help.
it supports all major Linux file systems on host, including ZFS and BTRFS.
built in HA clustering option if needed, at no cost.
so far I see no downsides...
