Proxmox is working on a new step in its virtualization platform. The company is introducing the beta version of Datacenter Manager. This is a central management solution that controls multiple clusters from a single console.
According to The Register, this move positions Proxmox more emphatically as an alternative to VMware. At the heart of the Proxmox portfolio is Virtual Environment (PVE), a hyper-converged infrastructure suite that organizations use to manage virtual machines and containers. The software now runs on more than 1.6 million hosts worldwide. Production clusters require at least three nodes. However, in practice, some companies combine dozens to hundreds of servers in a single cluster. Until now, this meant that each cluster had to be controlled separately, which made managing large environments complex.
Competitors have long offered features to manage multiple clusters from a single central environment. With Datacenter Manager, Proxmox aims to provide the same convenience. The tool is designed to provide administrators with an overview of all nodes and clusters, enabling basic functions such as migrating virtual machines without the need for a separate cluster network. For organizations that deploy hyperconverged infrastructure on a large scale, this can significantly simplify management.
VMware focuses on large customers
The timing of the new functionality is interesting. Following its acquisition by Broadcom, VMware is increasingly focusing on large customers and largely ignoring smaller organizations with simple virtualization needs. Proxmox may be attractive to this group in particular. The software is completely open source and, therefore, often more cost-efficient than commercial alternatives.
Although analysts emphasize that the VMware stack is still more developed and comprehensive than that of its competitors, interest in alternatives is growing. Not all workloads require VMware’s full enterprise feature set, and price increases are forcing organizations to reevaluate their infrastructure. At a recent conference, for example, an Australian retailer indicated that a sharp increase in VMware licensing costs prompted it to move some of its workloads to Hyper-V and Nutanix.
Proxmox expects to release a stable version of Datacenter Manager later this year. For users who already use PVE, this could be the next step towards simpler and more centralized management of their virtual infrastructure.