XCP-ng vs Proxmox
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2024-01-30_Compute_Setup.md
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2024-01-30_Compute_Setup.md
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---
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date: 2024-01-30
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title: Picking a Compute Hypervisor
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tags:
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- homelab
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- compute
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- proxmox
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- xcp-ng
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---
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With storage configured (and backups configured), I am moving on to configuring compute resources. Currently, I have Docker containers
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managed in Unraid and my goal is to add some redundancy which I assume will involve migrating to Kubernetes nodes running on multiple
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physical servers. In preparation for this, I have moved my ddns and WireGuard services from Unraid to my pfSense router. This means I
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can maintain remote access to my network so long as my router is on, even if nothing else on the network is running. With that taken
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care of, now I need somewhere for all of the other containers.
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## System Requirements
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I have a few requirements for the hypervisor I use for virtualized compute:
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- Ability to run Windows, Linux, and BSD VMs
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- Support for hardware pass-through
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- Support for ZVol disks
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- Web UI for management
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- FOSS with reasonable throubleshooting resources/support options
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With those requirements in mind I found Proxmox and XCP-NG to be the popular options for what I'm looking to do and have started researching
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and testing those options.
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## First Impressions
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To start, I will set up each option and get an idea of what the UI looks like, how administration will work, and form some basic opinions.
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I expect that either option will do what I need, so its more a question of how easy it is to get things running and administer the server(s).
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### Proxmox
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This seems to be the more popular option at the moment, with an active community and development team. It seems to to check all my boxes,
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including support for clustering and more functionality then I will likely use. These are only first impressions after setup and poking around
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the Web UI:
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#### Pros
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- Web UI with 2FA support and user management
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- Support for LXC and VMs
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- System monitoring tools built-in
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- KVM virtualization on Debian is a familiar configuration
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#### Cons
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- The clock is incorrect with no obvious place to run NTP
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- Web UI doesn't appear customizable and is bloated with Ceph, Firewall, and Disk management tools I won't use
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- There's a "No Subscription" modal that appears EVERY TIME you login unless you purchase an annual subscription
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The subscription warning is annoying to me as it feels needlesly intrusive. A banner/watermark or option to dismiss
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for a month at a time would be nice, or even a one-time payment option just to remove the warning. There are threads
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on the Proxmox forums discussing this and it is a conscious design decision that seems to be here to stay.
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### XCP-ng
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The older and more established option of these 2. The management interface here (Xen Orchestra) is distinct from the
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core OS and runs in a container but for the purposes of this comparison I will include Xen Orchestra functionality:
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#### Pros
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- Maintained by the Linux Foundation
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- Clean and easily navigable management UI
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- Monitoring tools built-in
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#### Cons
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- xen hypervisor is less common than KVM
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Overall, I find this UI much simpler and easier to navigate compared to Proxmox. I also really like that Xen Orchestra is independent from
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the actual virtualization system. I am less certain of how xen will compare to kvm, but based on my initial impressions I will start setting
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up some things with xcp-ng and see how it goes.
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## Some other notes
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Prior to installing anything, I did do some research into Proxmox and XCP-ng. I saw that both
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[Linode](https://www.linode.com/blog/linode/linode-turns-12-heres-some-kvm/)
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and [AWS](https://www.theregister.com/2017/11/07/aws_writes_new_kvm_based_hypervisor_to_make_its_cloud_go_faster/) have adopted kvm in recent
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years, citing better performance (though Amazon is using their own hypervisor built on top of kvm). However, I am comparing Proxmox and
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XCP-ng, not kvm an xen, so I don't believe these comparisons are directly applicable. I also came across a
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[forum post on lawrencesystems.com](https://forums.lawrencesystems.com/t/xen-vs-xenserver-vs-kvm-vs-proxmox/14256) from the CEO and co-founder
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of the company responsible for Xen Orchestra explaining some of the details of Xen, how it compared to KVM, and what the goals are for XO.
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## Where to go from here
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I will continue with setting up XCP-ng and get a better idea of whether it is the solution I am looking for. I may do some more with Proxmox,
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but based on my initial impressions and its overall scope I don't think it fits as well into the setup I have in mind. For the moment, I have
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things installed on a spare computer (a loose motherboard and PSU on a shelf in the spare room) so I have somewhere to break things before
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committing to any deployment.
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