{"slug": "proxmox", "name": "Proxmox", "category": "infra", "category_name": "Infrastructure and DevOps", "description": "Open-source Debian-based virtualization platform for managing KVM virtual machines and LXC containers.", "recommenders": 27, "commenters": 62, "warners": 1, "score": 30.137, "rising": -0.87, "first": "2025-11-10", "latest": "2026-10-28", "why": "HN commenters like Proxmox as the base for a homelab and as a viable VMware replacement, with built-in ZFS and full CLI and API control.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 28, "neutral": 39, "compare": 5, "warn": 1}, "spark": [2, 3, 2, 1, 2, 2, 1, 6, 3, 1, 4, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Homelab foundation", "VMware replacement"], "caveat": "Learning curve", "short_quote": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is.", "icon": true, "domain": "proxmox.com", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.proxmox.com/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Proxmox", "Proxmox VE"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Proxmox as the base for a homelab", "cites": [{"id": 738397888, "item_id": 46149868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149868", "by": "unethical_ban", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful, VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration, well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen. I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nod", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 802641728, "item_id": 50165108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165108", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground", "excerpt": "I run a multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph and 10 GbE. But do you have to have that for a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground? No! In my blog post here I take a look at what I think are things that you don't have to have when starting your home lab with Proxmox VE Server. What about you? What upgrade items did you skip?", "context": "runs multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph", "use_case": "home lab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Things you don't need to run a Proxmox home lab"}, {"id": 761297792, "item_id": 47581112, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581112", "by": "h4kunamata", "date": "2026-03-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Proxmox at home for my homelab.", "excerpt": ">A lot of our week is made up of the same kinds of small tasks: provision a VM, tweak storage settings, pass through a device, replicate a dataset, share a file, test an image, throw the machine away, do it again. None of that is exciting. All I read is that they are still doing ClickOPS over DevSecOps!! At no moment I heard automation, if you aren't using automation in 2026, your future in IT is cooked. I run Proxmo", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization with LXC", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}]}, {"text": " and as a viable VMware replacement,", "cites": [{"id": 777887553, "item_id": 48617972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48617972", "by": "alexellisuk", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement", "excerpt": "This is clever work, especially given that Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement and wasn\u2019t originally designed around microVMs as the primary abstraction. I\u2019m glad this is working well for you. We\u2019ve been on a similar journey, but came at it from the opposite direction. We started SlicerVM in 2022 after seeing how slow Multipass felt when launching more than one Linux VM, even though it is relatively l", "context": "", "use_case": "VM hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 735755376, "item_id": 45984711, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984711", "by": "accrual", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Proxmox 9 in my lab this year and couldn't be happier.", "excerpt": "Just adding my anecdata. I started using ESXi around 2016 for homelab purposes. This paid off nicely as my $CORP also uses VMWare products, so it was easy and natural to get into VMs and fix them up as needed. Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market and recognized the value created by letting hobby admins learn their tools. That's going away now and B", "context": "homelab user, works with VMware at $CORP", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "ESXi", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}]}, {"text": " with built-in ZFS and full CLI and API control.", "cites": [{"id": 796500560, "item_id": 49781285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781285", "by": "fghorow", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels.", "excerpt": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels. Easy to install. And, if you insist on running TrueNAS (or whatever) just stash it in a container or KVM box. (Edited to add: I forgot! ZFS on root available from the installer -- encrypted even if that's your jam.)", "context": "", "use_case": "home server virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Custom home server built from spare parts"}, {"id": 738397888, "item_id": 46149868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149868", "by": "unethical_ban", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful, VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration, well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen. I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nod", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 778894256, "item_id": 48680891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680891", "by": "redlewel", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time.", "excerpt": "I get the advantage of fully declarative systems such as Nix, but everything you do in proxmox via GUI can be done via CLI: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/#_command_line_interface CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time. The networking is also just a file in `/etc/network/interfaces` that I modify with vim as needed.", "context": "", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778889408, "item_id": 48680588, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680588", "by": "whalesalad", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me.", "excerpt": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me. I do not like configuring appliances. I prefer defining infra as code, having that diffable, assertable, etc. I have had pretty good luck managing Proxmox clusters with the Proxmox API (https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/api-viewer/index.html) or just letting the agent shell in as root (lol). I built a very simple provisioning tool called vmfactory t", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}]}, {"text": " The most common caveat is a learning curve,", "cites": [{"id": 777925344, "item_id": 48620334, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620334", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve", "excerpt": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve back when I used to use cursor I build this mcp but it should work for codex or claude it lets me easily spin up vms with specs its tough to create boxes now due to ram prices but got mine at a great time when it was very cheap; i just wish i had bought more then https://github.com/agentify-sh/cursor-proxmox-mcp", "context": "", "use_case": "running VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 735728096, "item_id": 45983006, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983006", "by": "4fterd4rk", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love it, I use it", "excerpt": "Man Proxmox... I love it, I use it, but I swear there has to be a more straightforward way to implement this technology.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}]}, {"text": " plus gaps like incomplete cloud-init support and no Raspberry Pi support.", "cites": [{"id": 776732033, "item_id": 48545752, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545752", "by": "cdevr", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Proxmox has too many compromises though.", "excerpt": "I made this (minus NixOS support, I should add that) for proxmox VE using their API a few weeks ago. I mean it's not this extensive, but it works: https://github.com/cdevr/dtt I mean, I'm not going to claim it's remotely near the same quality. And proxmox has some holes in their support for cloud init. And of course you need a mini pc on a good internet connection or the like. But extremely fast provisioning of a any", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: machine0 \u2013 Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI"}, {"id": 786918336, "item_id": 49182396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182396", "by": "RicoElectrico", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is. It's a bummer you can't use this on Raspberry Pi, but then again, they are incredibly bad value right now.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Virtual Environment now available for 64-bit ARM (ARM64)"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Homelab foundation", "summary": "Commenters call it the go-to base for a homelab and a good learning playground.", "quotes": [{"id": 738397888, "item_id": 46149868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149868", "by": "unethical_ban", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful, VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration, well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen. I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nod", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 802641728, "item_id": 50165108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165108", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground", "excerpt": "I run a multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph and 10 GbE. But do you have to have that for a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground? No! In my blog post here I take a look at what I think are things that you don't have to have when starting your home lab with Proxmox VE Server. What about you? What upgrade items did you skip?", "context": "runs multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph", "use_case": "home lab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Things you don't need to run a Proxmox home lab"}, {"id": 786918336, "item_id": 49182396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182396", "by": "RicoElectrico", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is. It's a bummer you can't use this on Raspberry Pi, but then again, they are incredibly bad value right now.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Virtual Environment now available for 64-bit ARM (ARM64)"}]}, {"label": "VMware replacement", "summary": "Seen as a viable VMware alternative, and several people switched from ESXi after the Broadcom acquisition.", "quotes": [{"id": 777887553, "item_id": 48617972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48617972", "by": "alexellisuk", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement", "excerpt": "This is clever work, especially given that Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement and wasn\u2019t originally designed around microVMs as the primary abstraction. I\u2019m glad this is working well for you. We\u2019ve been on a similar journey, but came at it from the opposite direction. We started SlicerVM in 2022 after seeing how slow Multipass felt when launching more than one Linux VM, even though it is relatively l", "context": "", "use_case": "VM hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 735755376, "item_id": 45984711, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984711", "by": "accrual", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Proxmox 9 in my lab this year and couldn't be happier.", "excerpt": "Just adding my anecdata. I started using ESXi around 2016 for homelab purposes. This paid off nicely as my $CORP also uses VMWare products, so it was easy and natural to get into VMs and fix them up as needed. Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market and recognized the value created by letting hobby admins learn their tools. That's going away now and B", "context": "homelab user, works with VMware at $CORP", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "ESXi", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}, {"id": 779924864, "item_id": 48745304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745304", "by": "zf00002", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "broadcom acquiring vmware so I had to switch to Proxmox", "excerpt": "I used to think of my home setup as a homelab but I've realized for about 4 years now I barely do anything with it beyond what it's supposed to do. I just have some basic services running, most time spent over the last 4 years has to do with broadcom acquiring vmware so I had to switch to Proxmox, and then just moving houses and having to setup again.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "VMware", "story": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab"}]}, {"label": "Automation-friendly", "summary": "Everything in the GUI can be done via CLI or API, and it works with Terraform.", "quotes": [{"id": 778894256, "item_id": 48680891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680891", "by": "redlewel", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time.", "excerpt": "I get the advantage of fully declarative systems such as Nix, but everything you do in proxmox via GUI can be done via CLI: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/#_command_line_interface CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time. The networking is also just a file in `/etc/network/interfaces` that I modify with vim as needed.", "context": "", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778889408, "item_id": 48680588, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680588", "by": "whalesalad", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me.", "excerpt": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me. I do not like configuring appliances. I prefer defining infra as code, having that diffable, assertable, etc. I have had pretty good luck managing Proxmox clusters with the Proxmox API (https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/api-viewer/index.html) or just letting the agent shell in as root (lol). I built a very simple provisioning tool called vmfactory t", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 761552528, "item_id": 47597033, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47597033", "by": "matifali", "date": "2026-03-31", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Proxmox as my infrastructure provider and heavily rely on Terraform to provision resources.", "excerpt": "Any plans or thoughts for? Terraform Provider? I use Proxmox as my infrastructure provider and heavily rely on Terraform to provision resources.", "context": "", "use_case": "infrastructure provider", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}]}, {"label": "ZFS and Debian", "summary": "Commenters value the Debian base, apt repos and first-class ZFS, including ZFS on root from the installer.", "quotes": [{"id": 796500560, "item_id": 49781285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781285", "by": "fghorow", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels.", "excerpt": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels. Easy to install. And, if you insist on running TrueNAS (or whatever) just stash it in a container or KVM box. (Edited to add: I forgot! ZFS on root available from the installer -- encrypted even if that's your jam.)", "context": "", "use_case": "home server virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Custom home server built from spare parts"}, {"id": 738397888, "item_id": 46149868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149868", "by": "unethical_ban", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful, VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration, well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen. I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nod", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 781742145, "item_id": 48858884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858884", "by": "flyinghamster", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server", "excerpt": "Until recently, I used it routinely for VMs, and it worked solidly and reliably. There is a ZFS storage backend as well, always nice to see since I've loved to use zvols for VMs, even when I did VirtualBox on OpenIndiana back before ZFS on Linux was viable. But I found that Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server, particularly for things like backup/restore and instru", "context": "", "use_case": "VM server with backup/restore", "switched_from": "virt-manager", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}]}, {"label": "Stable and reliable", "summary": "Users describe it as stable and reliable, in some cases running well for many years.", "quotes": [{"id": 793720544, "item_id": 49607534, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607534", "by": "_joel", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox been great for decades.", "excerpt": "Proxmox been great for decades. I used it back in 2011 when I was sysadmin for https://sahanafoundation.org/eden/ - we had multiple live instance running for the site, wiki, translation, GIS. Just when kvm was getting support too (not openvz) so it was nice an snappy running on some donated poweredge 2950's (thanks zen.co.uk!) Deployed for Haiti, Chengdu etc. All ran perfectly.", "context": "former sysadmin", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads"}, {"id": 763800352, "item_id": 47737522, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47737522", "by": "KronisLV", "date": "2026-04-12", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox itself is fairly stable", "excerpt": "> I use Linode or DigitalOcean. Pay no more than $5 to $10 a month. 1GB of RAM sounds terrifying to modern web developers, but it is plenty if you know what you are doing. If you get one dedicated server for multiple separate projects, you can still keep the costs down but relax those constraints. For example, look at the Hetzner server auction: https://www.hetzner.com/sb/ I pay about 40 EUR a month for this: Disk: 7", "context": "runs multiple projects on a Hetzner auction server", "use_case": "VMs on dedicated server", "switched_from": "", "story": "I run multiple $10K MRR companies on a $20/month tech stack"}, {"id": 781742145, "item_id": 48858884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858884", "by": "flyinghamster", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server", "excerpt": "Until recently, I used it routinely for VMs, and it worked solidly and reliably. There is a ZFS storage backend as well, always nice to see since I've loved to use zvols for VMs, even when I did VirtualBox on OpenIndiana back before ZFS on Linux was viable. But I found that Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server, particularly for things like backup/restore and instru", "context": "", "use_case": "VM server with backup/restore", "switched_from": "virt-manager", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}]}, {"label": "Good enough for orgs", "summary": "Used at day jobs for non-compute and colocated infrastructure, and considered good enough for most organizations.", "quotes": [{"id": 793568176, "item_id": 49598011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598011", "by": "INTPenis", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At my $dayjob we use Proxmox and it's good enough. I think Proxmox would be good enough for most orgs.", "excerpt": "Yeah it means nothing without details. They're a new HPE customer so they might be getting a discount the first year or something. A friend of mine is a virtualization SME and from what I can tell you don't really save that much on the alternatives. Also, HPE sell VMware. HPE has a modular solution where you can pick the hypervisor you want to use, including VMware. At my $dayjob we use Proxmox and it's good enough. ", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent"}, {"id": 739282128, "item_id": 46205133, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46205133", "by": "throw0101d", "date": "2025-12-09", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "we use Proxmox for our non-compute infrastructure (LDAP, SMTP, SSH jump boxes)", "excerpt": "> Heck, I work at a much smaller particle accelerator (https://ifmif.org) and have met the CERN guys, and they were the first to say that for our needs, OpenStack is absolutely overkill. I currently work in AI/ML HPC, and we use Proxmox for our non-compute infrastructure (LDAP, SMTP, SSH jump boxes). I used to work in cancer with HPC, and we used OpenStack for several dozen hypervisors to run a lot of infra/services ", "context": "works in AI/ML HPC", "use_case": "non-compute infrastructure VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 778910929, "item_id": 48681933, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681933", "by": "wingmanjd", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A terraform repo contains the 2 colocation datacenter proxmox environments", "excerpt": "At $DAYJOB, we use the Telmate terraform proxmox provider, too. Upgrades over the years have had a few papercuts (mainly when values are shifted around), but it has overall been an immense timesaver. A terraform repo contains the 2 colocation datacenter proxmox environments plus a local lab edition of the same builds (locallab uses containers vs full VM's on the \"real\" hardware so that I can run almost all of the con", "context": "uses it at their day job", "use_case": "virtualization in colocation datacenters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Learning curve", "summary": "Commenters say it takes some learning and wish it were more straightforward.", "quotes": [{"id": 777925344, "item_id": 48620334, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620334", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve", "excerpt": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve back when I used to use cursor I build this mcp but it should work for codex or claude it lets me easily spin up vms with specs its tough to create boxes now due to ram prices but got mine at a great time when it was very cheap; i just wish i had bought more then https://github.com/agentify-sh/cursor-proxmox-mcp", "context": "", "use_case": "running VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 735728096, "item_id": 45983006, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983006", "by": "4fterd4rk", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love it, I use it", "excerpt": "Man Proxmox... I love it, I use it, but I swear there has to be a more straightforward way to implement this technology.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}]}, {"label": "Cloud-init gaps", "summary": "One commenter says cloud-init support has holes and that Proxmox has too many compromises.", "quotes": [{"id": 776732033, "item_id": 48545752, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545752", "by": "cdevr", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Proxmox has too many compromises though.", "excerpt": "I made this (minus NixOS support, I should add that) for proxmox VE using their API a few weeks ago. I mean it's not this extensive, but it works: https://github.com/cdevr/dtt I mean, I'm not going to claim it's remotely near the same quality. And proxmox has some holes in their support for cloud init. And of course you need a mini pc on a good internet connection or the like. But extremely fast provisioning of a any", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: machine0 \u2013 Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI"}]}, {"label": "No Raspberry Pi", "summary": "It can't be used on a Raspberry Pi.", "quotes": [{"id": 786918336, "item_id": 49182396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182396", "by": "RicoElectrico", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is. It's a bummer you can't use this on Raspberry Pi, but then again, they are incredibly bad value right now.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Virtual Environment now available for 64-bit ARM (ARM64)"}]}, {"label": "CephFS small files", "summary": "One user finds CephFS on their Proxmox cluster weak with many small files.", "quotes": [{"id": 782104739, "item_id": 48881546, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881546", "by": "snapplebobapple", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cephfs on my proxmox cluster", "excerpt": "I think it's those small writes that was making garagefs perform so badly and rustfs perform a lot better. My setup sounds like a different scale than yours though. It's my home lab running on questionable hardware. As truenas apps for rustfs/garagefs. I use cephfs on my proxmox cluster and it's honestly not that great if you have a lot of small files either (which I do because of things like screenshots in jellyfin/", "context": "home lab", "use_case": "virtualization cluster", "switched_from": "", "story": "ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files"}]}, {"label": "HA limits", "summary": "Enabling HA doesn't by itself guarantee that applications recover after a failure.", "quotes": [{"id": 804364368, "item_id": 50272773, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50272773", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Enabling HA in your Proxmox cluster is a step in the right direction.", "excerpt": "Enabling HA in your Proxmox cluster is a step in the right direction. However, it doesn't always mean your app will recover from a failure. I take a look at five practical checks for your HA. We cover host failure, network partitions and fencing, recovery-node compatibility, storage availability, and application failures inside a running VM. The goal is to see when the application becomes usable again, which is bette", "context": "", "use_case": "high availability clustering", "switched_from": "", "story": null}]}], "who": [{"by": "walrus01", "context": "Runs a headless VM reached via VNC/SSH", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214315", "date": "2026-10-23"}, {"by": "bleevht", "context": "home lab blogger", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194594", "date": "2026-10-22"}, {"by": "BLKNSLVR", "context": "runs ex-thin client home lab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165996", "date": "2026-10-20"}, {"by": "h4kunamata", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50064021", "date": "2026-10-12"}, {"by": "_joel", "context": "former sysadmin", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607534", "date": "2026-09-08"}, {"by": "delta_p_delta_x", "context": "uses Linux and Windows regularly, homelab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49595373", "date": "2026-09-07"}, {"by": "nickthegreek", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "date": "2026-09-02"}, {"by": "snapplebobapple", "context": "home lab", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881546", "date": "2026-07-12"}, {"by": "FireBeyond", "context": "homelab operator", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "date": "2026-07-01"}, {"by": "zf00002", "context": "homelab user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745304", "date": "2026-07-01"}, {"by": "nekusar", "context": "sells exam-cheating setup services", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48713101", "date": "2026-06-28"}, {"by": "wingmanjd", "context": "uses it at their day job", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681933", "date": "2026-06-25"}], "tags": ["for homelabs", "VMware alternative", "for AI agent sandboxes", "for GPU passthrough", "for business infrastructure"], "use_cases": ["homelab virtualization", "virtualization", "home lab virtualization", "virtualization host", "home server virtualization", "home virtualization"], "compared": [{"slug": "incus", "name": "Incus", "co": 6, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "vmware", "name": "VMware", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ansible", "name": "Ansible", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "nixos", "name": "NixOS", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "home-assistant", "name": "Home Assistant", "co": 5, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "truenas", "name": "TrueNAS", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "docker", "name": "Docker", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "zfs", "name": "ZFS", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48679385", "title": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus", "mentions": 5}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48599555", "title": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47553910", "title": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45821154", "title": "Incus-OS: Immutable Linux OS to run Incus as a hypervisor", "mentions": 3}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165107", "title": "Things you don't need to run a Proxmox home lab", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48719573", "title": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab", "mentions": 2}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {"neutral": 3, "compare": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2025-12": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 3}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 3, "recommend": 2}, "2026-02": {"neutral": 3, "compare": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-03": {"recommend": 2, "compare": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-04": {"neutral": 2, "recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-06": {"neutral": 6, "warn": 1, "recommend": 6}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 5, "recommend": 3}, "2026-08": {"recommend": 1, "neutral": 2}, "2026-09": {"neutral": 4, "recommend": 4}, "2026-10": {"neutral": 7, "compare": 1, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 804364368, "item_id": 50272773, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50272773", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Enabling HA in your Proxmox cluster is a step in the right direction.", "excerpt": "Enabling HA in your Proxmox cluster is a step in the right direction. However, it doesn't always mean your app will recover from a failure. I take a look at five practical checks for your HA. We cover host failure, network partitions and fencing, recovery-node compatibility, storage availability, and application failures inside a running VM. The goal is to see when the application becomes usable again, which is bette", "context": "", "use_case": "high availability clustering", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 803429040, "item_id": 50214315, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50214315", "by": "walrus01", "date": "2026-10-23", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "it's a fairly boring proxmox server", "excerpt": "In my case it's a fairly boring proxmox server. The KVM VM started as a bare bones debian install and then I added xorg and xfce4 and the tiger vnc server. I have a GUI on it for when I want to use it that way (in screen dimensions that are a 1:1 mapping of the native resolution of my laptop for full screen VNC session), or of course I also talk to it by regular SSH session, and screen or tmux. The VNC server listens", "context": "Runs a headless VM reached via VNC/SSH", "use_case": "hosting headless KVM VM", "switched_from": "", "story": "OpenShell \u2013 A safe, private runtime for fleets of autonomous AI agents"}, {"id": 803113504, "item_id": 50194594, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50194594", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-22", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "You may only have the resources for a single Proxmox server to start out in your home lab.", "excerpt": "You may only have the resources for a single Proxmox server to start out in your home lab. But, actually, did you know you can do just about everything with a single node that you can do with a cluster in terms of learning? Check out this post where I take a look at really how many projects and learning experiments you can do having just a single node to work with.", "context": "home lab blogger", "use_case": "home lab learning", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 802655936, "item_id": 50165996, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165996", "by": "BLKNSLVR", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used to use it for storage for the Proxmox VMs", "excerpt": "I'm running a bunch (3x 24/7, 2x needs-based) of ex-thin client machines, because they're low power consumption and I don't need a lot of compute for what I run, which my bank account is severely thankful for. I don't use any of the seven advanced things. I do have a NAS, but that's primarily for backups. I used to use it for storage for the Proxmox VMs, but then it became a centralised point of failure, so now each ", "context": "runs ex-thin client home lab", "use_case": "home lab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Things you don't need to run a Proxmox home lab"}, {"id": 802641728, "item_id": 50165108, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50165108", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-10-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground", "excerpt": "I run a multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph and 10 GbE. But do you have to have that for a Proxmox home lab to be successful and a great learning playground? No! In my blog post here I take a look at what I think are things that you don't have to have when starting your home lab with Proxmox VE Server. What about you? What upgrade items did you skip?", "context": "runs multi-node Proxmox lab with Ceph", "use_case": "home lab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Things you don't need to run a Proxmox home lab"}, {"id": 801839489, "item_id": 50114968, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50114968", "by": "bengalister", "date": "2026-10-16", "stance": "compare", "quote": "At some point I had thought of using proxmox with lxc", "excerpt": "I also self host some services: keycloak, forgejo, home assistant, immich, grafana/prometheus, jellyfin, pureftp (to store my surveillance cameras videos), and a vibecoded financial app, and soon hermes agent on a 2023 laptop. I chose to run most of them on Kubernetes since I am used to work with it. I use: - ha-proxy running on the host and istio running inside the cluster for the sni based ingress routing - cert-ma", "context": "homelab self-hoster, works with Kubernetes", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "What I self-host"}, {"id": 801450256, "item_id": 50090641, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50090641", "by": "madduci", "date": "2026-10-14", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "we used Proxmox as host to spin up ready images built with Packer", "excerpt": "Same here, we used Proxmox as host to spin up ready images built with Packer and starting them with Vagrant to provision the app on the system under test, the whole triggered by the CI build", "context": "", "use_case": "host for disposable test VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running Windows desktop tests from Linux with disposable VMs"}, {"id": 801024337, "item_id": 50064021, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50064021", "by": "h4kunamata", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I run Proxmox LXC containers at home managed via Ansible.", "excerpt": "Disagree. I run Proxmox LXC containers at home managed via Ansible. I used Claude to assist me getting 4 services I was not familiar with working, draft the configuration, the firewall rule so all the traffic goes via a VPN and not my home network. 2 days and got everything working. It took away what would have taken me a week reading posts after posts. Know that it is a tool to assist you and you will learn a lot fr", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "home virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Using AI for just 10 minutes erodes your ability to persist at hard things"}, {"id": 800835809, "item_id": 50052238, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50052238", "by": "Leonard_of_Q", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "running under ProxMox", "excerpt": "While it is good to have choice in commercial routers I haven't used one for a long time, instead running a virtual router on the same machine (an ex-lease DL380 G7, these have 4 ethernet ports) which hosts all services. I use a number of commercial Wifi-equipped routers as access points, these all have OpenWRT installed and all routing functionality is disabled. There's a managed 24-port switch in between the DL380 ", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization host", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: Do you want a router that has DD-WRT pre-installed?"}, {"id": 799857760, "item_id": 49991110, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49991110", "by": "mattfrommars", "date": "2026-10-07", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I repurposed my old macbook pro from 2013 as dedicated Proxmox machine.", "excerpt": "I repurposed my old macbook pro from 2013 as dedicated Proxmox machine. I run all short of application on it - mostly pulled from https://community-scripts.org/. Along this, I use free tier of Oracle VM to funnel traffic to my box and use that as reverse proxy appliance. Thee isn't a real need to pay $5-$10 for a VPS if you have old machine lying around and use AI to help you configure it. I gave my setup using which", "context": "", "use_case": "home server virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?"}, {"id": 799009538, "item_id": 49938096, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49938096", "by": "roosterIllusi0n", "date": "2026-10-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "set up containers on a proxmox server", "excerpt": "I am using qwen3.8-27B-UD-Q3_K_XL on a 5080 16gb card with 16gb of system ram at around 43-45tok/s with 65k context. I am using that model to set up containers on a proxmox server with two b70s and 96gb ram. The Q3 model implemented 10 different chat models, 2 image models, and 7 web based harnesses so I can compare. It can rewrite any part to improve it. qwen3.8 is more than capable for software dev. The gemma model", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting containers", "switched_from": "", "story": "Several vulnerabilities have been discovered in the Linux kernel"}, {"id": 798527616, "item_id": 49907976, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49907976", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-09-30", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "We also take a look at Proxmox VM firewall rules for blocking traffic between workloads on the same VLAN.", "excerpt": "Check out this walkthrough for checking which connections can cross home lab VLANs. It is important to identify the firewall rules that allow traffic, and make sure you test your changes with port tests and firewall logs. We also take a look at Proxmox VM firewall rules for blocking traffic between workloads on the same VLAN.", "context": "", "use_case": "VM firewall rules in homelab", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 797437603, "item_id": 49839850, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49839850", "by": "unrented7977", "date": "2026-09-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use prowlarr and radarr in my hone proxmox setup.", "excerpt": "I use prowlarr and radarr in my hone proxmox setup. I have a container locked behind a VPN running my torrent client and everything pipes into my Jellyfin server. My non-techie partner honestly uses it way more than I do because it's just so damn easy. You punch a request into radarr and after some time it magically appears in Jellyfin. It was a bear to set up the first time, but smooth sailing after that", "context": "", "use_case": "home virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Disney+ and Hulu raise prices by up to 13 percent after doubling profits"}, {"id": 796500560, "item_id": 49781285, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49781285", "by": "fghorow", "date": "2026-09-20", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels.", "excerpt": "Check out proxmox. Debian base with Debian apt repos available for standard stuff, with ZFS built into their kernels. Easy to install. And, if you insist on running TrueNAS (or whatever) just stash it in a container or KVM box. (Edited to add: I forgot! ZFS on root available from the installer -- encrypted even if that's your jam.)", "context": "", "use_case": "home server virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Custom home server built from spare parts"}, {"id": 795842816, "item_id": 49740176, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49740176", "by": "bleevht", "date": "2026-09-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "before I start moving real workloads over to a new Proxmox host", "excerpt": "I put together a few steps I go through and checks I make before I start moving real workloads over to a new Proxmox host in the home lab. In the post we take a look at what I think are several important steps and areas, including hostname and DNS configuration, update repositories, and storage health. But we also look at the networking side with speed tests and MTU checks, VM hardware defaults, backups, etc. Also, o", "context": "home lab user", "use_case": "home lab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": null}, {"id": 793720544, "item_id": 49607534, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49607534", "by": "_joel", "date": "2026-09-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox been great for decades.", "excerpt": "Proxmox been great for decades. I used it back in 2011 when I was sysadmin for https://sahanafoundation.org/eden/ - we had multiple live instance running for the site, wiki, translation, GIS. Just when kvm was getting support too (not openvz) so it was nice an snappy running on some donated poweredge 2950's (thanks zen.co.uk!) Deployed for Haiti, Chengdu etc. All ran perfectly.", "context": "former sysadmin", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Leaving VMware just got harder after Broadcom pulled VDDK downloads"}, {"id": 793568176, "item_id": 49598011, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49598011", "by": "INTPenis", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "At my $dayjob we use Proxmox and it's good enough. I think Proxmox would be good enough for most orgs.", "excerpt": "Yeah it means nothing without details. They're a new HPE customer so they might be getting a discount the first year or something. A friend of mine is a virtualization SME and from what I can tell you don't really save that much on the alternatives. Also, HPE sell VMware. HPE has a modular solution where you can pick the hypervisor you want to use, including VMware. At my $dayjob we use Proxmox and it's good enough. ", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization at work", "switched_from": "", "story": "VMware migration reduces Tottenham Hotspur's licensing fees by 85 percent"}, {"id": 793525968, "item_id": 49595373, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49595373", "by": "delta_p_delta_x", "date": "2026-09-07", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Linux is superb for servers\u2014I use Proxmox VE as the hypervisor on my homelab", "excerpt": "> how much nicer a (well supported, well put together) Linux distro is, compared to Windows As someone who regularly uses both, and even in spite of the ad avalanche that (a bog-standard home install of) Windows has become: [X] to doubt. I regularly have issues on my corporate Linux laptop that I suspect wouldn't ever happen on Windows. Fleet management is easiest on Windows, with Active Directory, Group Policy, imag", "context": "uses Linux and Windows regularly, homelab", "use_case": "homelab hypervisor", "switched_from": "", "story": "Switzerland's Federal Government Is Replacing Microsoft on 3k Computers"}, {"id": 792667570, "item_id": 49541723, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49541723", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-09-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "My codex will ADB into my NVIDIA Shield and proxmox and setup accounts", "excerpt": "Good news, my coding agents can access my proxmox and HA and immich and make having a homelab easier than it ever has been. I actually just used codex to help me find dupes across multiple user libraries in immich and quarantine them. In immich, I can only dedupe across a single user library. I used codex to find grid based images that I needed to convert into animated images from back in my iphone 4 days. It located", "context": "hobbyist with a homelab", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Saving money on Google Photos with Immich: Your own personal photo storage"}, {"id": 792300017, "item_id": 49518751, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49518751", "by": "BillStrong", "date": "2026-09-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "there are some scripts that make it easy from Proxmox that I use", "excerpt": "VMs with GPU passed through. You can get Mac compatible GPUs that will work, look for the Dortania OpenCore guide GPU lists to find one that works for the version of Mac OS X it runs on. Looking on Macintosh Repository, that game will run on Intel CPUs and Snow Leopard, 10.6+. (IDK for sure.) You can emulate Intel Mac OS X using QEMU on linux machines, there are some scripts that make it easy from Proxmox that I use.", "context": "", "use_case": "running Mac OS X VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Run macOS Software on Linux"}, {"id": 791640529, "item_id": 49477533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49477533", "by": "api", "date": "2026-08-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I also run them on VMs on my home Proxmox box.", "excerpt": "I run these things in VMs, and as a user in the VM, and give them access to just the tree I want to work on via mounting. I use Parallels on macOS for this but any VM will do. That way my actual primary machine is at least strongly isolated. I also run them on VMs on my home Proxmox box. Zed, as an IDE, can connect to a VM via ssh and both edit and run things like Claude or its built-in agentic harness on your code w", "context": "", "use_case": "home VM host for agents", "switched_from": "", "story": "AI Agent Has Root"}, {"id": 789487266, "item_id": 49342954, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49342954", "by": "roosterIllusi0n", "date": "2026-08-18", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "Gemma4 screwed up a proxmox install I had.", "excerpt": "My issue with Gemma 4 is that any task fails to complete after any compaction event. It often ends up in a loop that keeps compacting and showing the same compaction output. Qwen3.8-27B-IQ4_XS was a massive improvement. It's tasks survive compaction and actually get completed. I switched to Qwen3.8-27B-UD-Q3_K_XL for better performance and its working just as well. Gemma4 screwed up a proxmox install I had. I booted ", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization host", "switched_from": "", "story": "Qwen 3.8 27B is excellent, but it defaults to overthinking things"}, {"id": 786918336, "item_id": 49182396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49182396", "by": "RicoElectrico", "date": "2026-08-05", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox. It's one of the few infrastructure tools that defy YAGNI and are almost always a good idea to have no matter how simple your setup is. It's a bummer you can't use this on Raspberry Pi, but then again, they are incredibly bad value right now.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Virtual Environment now available for 64-bit ARM (ARM64)"}, {"id": 783596800, "item_id": 48974800, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48974800", "by": "BatteryMountain", "date": "2026-07-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use a proxmox server with pcie passthrough to a fedora instance with steam on it.", "excerpt": "True, I've played many indies the last 5 years, they can be amazing indeed and feels like actual games, not chores! I've abandoned games that are too complex too (stellaris and friends). Basically only play games that can help me decompress my mind within a two hour space before bed. For what its worth, I use a proxmox server with pcie passthrough to a fedora instance with steam on it. Then I stream with sunshine/moo", "context": "", "use_case": "gaming VM host", "switched_from": "", "story": "LG monitors silently install software through Windows Update without consent"}, {"id": 782104739, "item_id": 48881546, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48881546", "by": "snapplebobapple", "date": "2026-07-12", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use cephfs on my proxmox cluster", "excerpt": "I think it's those small writes that was making garagefs perform so badly and rustfs perform a lot better. My setup sounds like a different scale than yours though. It's my home lab running on questionable hardware. As truenas apps for rustfs/garagefs. I use cephfs on my proxmox cluster and it's honestly not that great if you have a lot of small files either (which I do because of things like screenshots in jellyfin/", "context": "home lab", "use_case": "virtualization cluster", "switched_from": "", "story": "ZeroFS vs. Amazon S3 Files"}, {"id": 781742145, "item_id": 48858884, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48858884", "by": "flyinghamster", "date": "2026-07-10", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server", "excerpt": "Until recently, I used it routinely for VMs, and it worked solidly and reliably. There is a ZFS storage backend as well, always nice to see since I've loved to use zvols for VMs, even when I did VirtualBox on OpenIndiana back before ZFS on Linux was viable. But I found that Proxmox fit my needs much better than wrestling vanilla Ubuntu or Debian into a VM server, particularly for things like backup/restore and instru", "context": "", "use_case": "VM server with backup/restore", "switched_from": "virt-manager", "story": "Ditching Vagrant: VMs with KVM and Virsh on Debian"}, {"id": 781303714, "item_id": 48831482, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48831482", "by": "nekusar", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "running it in a container on a VM on proxmox", "excerpt": "Thank you for addressing my list. I'd like to use it, but requirements on non-local services is a deal breaker for me. Right now, with my Nanoclaw, I'm running it in a container on a VM on proxmox. If things get bad, I lose a backed up machine and any services it has credentials to. I can understand why IMAP is a pain. There's plenty of functions that can trash mailboxes. I don't envy you all in this task. For my STT", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Rowboat \u2013 Open-source, local-first alternative to Claude Desktop"}, {"id": 781292896, "item_id": 48830806, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48830806", "by": "rcarmo", "date": "2026-07-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "since I use Proxmox I used that to manage the volumes", "excerpt": "This is pretty much what I did, except that since I use Proxmox I used that to manage the volumes and then just did a pass-through mount to an LXC that runs Samba - that way I get a decent, simple GUI to monitor and manage volumes and can do user management inside the LXC.", "context": "", "use_case": "managing ZFS volumes", "switched_from": "", "story": "How to Build a Minimal ZFS NAS Without Synology, QNAP, TrueNAS"}, {"id": 780267041, "item_id": 48766690, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48766690", "by": "nickthegreek", "date": "2026-07-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I used the proxmox lxc for it", "excerpt": "Man, I wish my experience was as nice. I used the proxmox lxc for it and after a 2 months of organizing I had some corruption and didn't have the fortitude to get through the debugging. It might have been related to a big version migration if I remember correctly. It turned me off the stack. The upgrading wasn't as turnkey as I wanted it to be and I dont think the case is different today. I just want to be able to or", "context": "", "use_case": "hosting Immich", "switched_from": "", "story": "Immich v3.0.0 Released"}, {"id": 780003171, "item_id": 48750198, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48750198", "by": "FireBeyond", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "spin everything up via PXE to install Proxmox, Ubuntu", "excerpt": "I got sick of the work around it, so one weekend recently, while my partner was out of town, I used Claude to help re-architect my whole homelab to be effectively 100% IaC with OpenTofu and Salt. Went through the whole architecture, networking, etc. Now I would just need to pull down the repo to my Mac and can spin everything up via PXE to install Proxmox, Ubuntu, etc., and then I have a scheduled golden image build,", "context": "homelab operator", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab"}, {"id": 779924864, "item_id": 48745304, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48745304", "by": "zf00002", "date": "2026-07-01", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "broadcom acquiring vmware so I had to switch to Proxmox", "excerpt": "I used to think of my home setup as a homelab but I've realized for about 4 years now I barely do anything with it beyond what it's supposed to do. I just have some basic services running, most time spent over the last 4 years has to do with broadcom acquiring vmware so I had to switch to Proxmox, and then just moving houses and having to setup again.", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "VMware", "story": "I Don't Maintain My Homelab"}, {"id": 779409616, "item_id": 48713101, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48713101", "by": "nekusar", "date": "2026-06-28", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "And you can run it in proxmox.", "excerpt": "Exactly. College is a pure financial transaction, and a quite bad one especially if you fail. As for me, I use a HDMI redirect to another computer that runs a local LLM. Screen scrapes and puts the answer on the screen as an overlay. And you can run it in proxmox. I sell services to set this up. Can't be detected, and user controls an error rate calc. BTW, I have no degree myself. And I have no greater ioy than deval", "context": "sells exam-cheating setup services", "use_case": "hosting local LLM setup", "switched_from": "", "story": "Professor denounces mass AI fraud on an exam at Brown University"}, {"id": 778910929, "item_id": 48681933, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681933", "by": "wingmanjd", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "A terraform repo contains the 2 colocation datacenter proxmox environments", "excerpt": "At $DAYJOB, we use the Telmate terraform proxmox provider, too. Upgrades over the years have had a few papercuts (mainly when values are shifted around), but it has overall been an immense timesaver. A terraform repo contains the 2 colocation datacenter proxmox environments plus a local lab edition of the same builds (locallab uses containers vs full VM's on the \"real\" hardware so that I can run almost all of the con", "context": "uses it at their day job", "use_case": "virtualization in colocation datacenters", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778910865, "item_id": 48681929, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681929", "by": "Helmut10001", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use across Proxmoxes and VMs", "excerpt": "I get your point and this is likely also not what you mean, but I am very happy with a simple git tracking approach that I use across Proxmoxes and VMs [1]. [1]: https://du.nkel.dev/blog/2026-05-16_rootless_docker_virtiofs_proxmox/#git-based-configuration-tracking", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778905553, "item_id": 48681597, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48681597", "by": "h4kunamata", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I do not log into Proxmox to deploy my stuff, I enjoy CLI", "excerpt": ">By moving to NixOS, my entire infrastructure is defined in text files. This means my AI agents can read, understand, and even safely modify my infrastructure You lost me there!! Firstly, NixOS is hype, like everything being moved to Rust and failing miserably. Secondly, \"AI ... can .... safely modify my infrastructure\", OP is either being a troll or haven't seem how the whole IT world is upside down because of those", "context": "homelab operator", "use_case": "LXC container hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778894256, "item_id": 48680891, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680891", "by": "redlewel", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time.", "excerpt": "I get the advantage of fully declarative systems such as Nix, but everything you do in proxmox via GUI can be done via CLI: https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/#_command_line_interface CLI is first class in proxmox, I use the qm command for managing vms all the time. The networking is also just a file in `/etc/network/interfaces` that I modify with vim as needed.", "context": "", "use_case": "managing VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 778889408, "item_id": 48680588, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48680588", "by": "whalesalad", "date": "2026-06-25", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me.", "excerpt": "I haven't abandoned Proxmox yet, but the take here resonates with me. I do not like configuring appliances. I prefer defining infra as code, having that diffable, assertable, etc. I have had pretty good luck managing Proxmox clusters with the Proxmox API (https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/api-viewer/index.html) or just letting the agent shell in as root (lol). I built a very simple provisioning tool called vmfactory t", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Migrating from Proxmox to NixOS and Incus"}, {"id": 777926672, "item_id": 48620417, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620417", "by": "FireBeyond", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I have a beefy home lab (Dual Xeon Silver 4116 with 384GB, and 12TB of RAID10 SSD connected via 10gig)", "excerpt": "Yeah, I love this from a geek appeal and I have a beefy home lab (Dual Xeon Silver 4116 with 384GB, and 12TB of RAID10 SSD connected via 10gig), but being a homelab I want to eke out all my performance so I keep looking at LXC on my Proxmox box versus the optimization of VMs (does this machine really need 8GB or 6? Or 5?). But when there's the discussion of the amount of time Qemu spends \"in grub\" and \"probing legacy", "context": "homelab owner", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 777925344, "item_id": 48620334, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48620334", "by": "agentifysh", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve", "excerpt": "proxmox has been great although it comes with a learning curve back when I used to use cursor I build this mcp but it should work for codex or claude it lets me easily spin up vms with specs its tough to create boxes now due to ram prices but got mine at a great time when it was very cheap; i just wish i had bought more then https://github.com/agentify-sh/cursor-proxmox-mcp", "context": "", "use_case": "running VMs", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 777887553, "item_id": 48617972, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48617972", "by": "alexellisuk", "date": "2026-06-21", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement", "excerpt": "This is clever work, especially given that Proxmox is already a very viable VMware replacement and wasn\u2019t originally designed around microVMs as the primary abstraction. I\u2019m glad this is working well for you. We\u2019ve been on a similar journey, but came at it from the opposite direction. We started SlicerVM in 2022 after seeing how slow Multipass felt when launching more than one Linux VM, even though it is relatively l", "context": "", "use_case": "VM hosting", "switched_from": "", "story": "Running MicroVMs in Proxmox VE, the Easy Way"}, {"id": 776732033, "item_id": 48545752, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48545752", "by": "cdevr", "date": "2026-06-15", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Proxmox has too many compromises though.", "excerpt": "I made this (minus NixOS support, I should add that) for proxmox VE using their API a few weeks ago. I mean it's not this extensive, but it works: https://github.com/cdevr/dtt I mean, I'm not going to claim it's remotely near the same quality. And proxmox has some holes in their support for cloud init. And of course you need a mini pc on a good internet connection or the like. But extremely fast provisioning of a any", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: machine0 \u2013 Persistent NixOS VMs You Control from the CLI"}, {"id": 761297792, "item_id": 47581112, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47581112", "by": "h4kunamata", "date": "2026-03-30", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I run Proxmox at home for my homelab.", "excerpt": ">A lot of our week is made up of the same kinds of small tasks: provision a VM, tweak storage settings, pass through a device, replicate a dataset, share a file, test an image, throw the machine away, do it again. None of that is exciting. All I read is that they are still doing ClickOPS over DevSecOps!! At no moment I heard automation, if you aren't using automation in 2026, your future in IT is cooked. I run Proxmo", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization with LXC", "switched_from": "", "story": "From Proxmox to FreeBSD and Sylve in Our Office Lab"}, {"id": 738397888, "item_id": 46149868, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46149868", "by": "unethical_ban", "date": "2025-12-04", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab.", "excerpt": "I love Proxmox as a virtual server manager - I can't imagine running anything else as a base for a homelab. Free, powerful, VMs or CTs operating quickly, graphical shell for administration, well documented and used, ZFS is a first class citizen. I've kind of wanted to build a three node cluster with some low end stuff to expand my knowledge of it. Now they have a datacenter controller. I'd need to build twice the nod", "context": "homelab user", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Proxmox Datacenter Manager 1.0 available"}, {"id": 735755376, "item_id": 45984711, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45984711", "by": "accrual", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I switched to Proxmox 9 in my lab this year and couldn't be happier.", "excerpt": "Just adding my anecdata. I started using ESXi around 2016 for homelab purposes. This paid off nicely as my $CORP also uses VMWare products, so it was easy and natural to get into VMs and fix them up as needed. Pretty unhappy about the Broadcom acquisition as VMWare previously seemed to care about the homelab market and recognized the value created by letting hobby admins learn their tools. That's going away now and B", "context": "homelab user, works with VMware at $CORP", "use_case": "homelab virtualization", "switched_from": "ESXi", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}, {"id": 735728096, "item_id": 45983006, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45983006", "by": "4fterd4rk", "date": "2025-11-19", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I love it, I use it", "excerpt": "Man Proxmox... I love it, I use it, but I swear there has to be a more straightforward way to implement this technology.", "context": "", "use_case": "virtualization", "switched_from": "", "story": "Adventures in upgrading Proxmox"}]}