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Proxmox VE VS Xen

Compare Proxmox VE VS Xen and see what are their differences

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Proxmox VE logo Proxmox VE

Proxmox is an open-source server virtualization management solution that offers the ability to manage virtual server technology with the Linux OpenVZ and KVM technology.

Xen logo Xen

Xen Project: Open Source Hypervisor, High Performance Clouds, Free Software, Open Source Virtualization, Open Virtualization, Cloud Computing, Desktop Virtualization, Mobile Virtualization, Embedded Virtualization.
  • Proxmox VE Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-09-16
  • Xen Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-12-16

Proxmox VE features and specs

  • Open-Source
    Proxmox VE is completely open-source, allowing users to inspect, modify, and distribute the software as needed. This fosters a large community and encourages collaboration and transparency.
  • Cost-Effective
    There are no licensing fees for Proxmox VE, making it a cost-effective solution for enterprises, small businesses, and home labs.
  • Comprehensive Feature Set
    Proxmox VE offers a wide range of features, including clustering, KVM and LXC virtualization, high availability, backups, and integrated disaster recovery.
  • Integrated Web-Based GUI
    It provides a powerful and user-friendly web interface for managing VMs, containers, storage, and network configurations, which reduces administration complexity.
  • Enterprise Support Options
    While the software itself is free, Proxmox VE offers paid support plans that provide professional assistance, updates, and enhancements.
  • Scalability
    Proxmox VE supports clustering, allowing users to scale their virtualized environments across multiple physical servers with ease.

Possible disadvantages of Proxmox VE

  • Learning Curve
    For users new to virtualization or Linux-based systems, there may be a significant learning curve to fully utilize Proxmox VE’s features.
  • Hardware Compatibility
    Though generally broad, some specific hardware might not be fully supported, requiring additional configuration or workarounds.
  • Community-Based Support
    Free support is generally community-based, which can sometimes lead to less timely or reliable assistance compared to paid, vendor-provided support.
  • Updating and Upgrading
    While updates and upgrades are regular, they might occasionally introduce compatibility issues or require manual intervention.
  • Feature Gaps with Proprietary Solutions
    Even though Proxmox VE is feature-rich, there might be specific advanced features available in proprietary solutions (like VMware vSphere) that Proxmox VE lacks.
  • Integration with Third-Party Tools
    Integrating Proxmox VE with certain third-party tools and systems can sometimes be challenging, necessitating custom solutions or additional configurations.

Xen features and specs

  • Open Source
    Xen is an open-source hypervisor, meaning it is free to use and has a large community that continuously works on improvements, security updates, and new features.
  • High Performance
    Xen is known for its high performance in both paravirtualized and hardware virtualized environments, offering near-native performance for virtual machines.
  • Security
    Xen has robust security features, including its ability to minimize attack surfaces through a small Trusted Computing Base (TCB). Additionally, XenServer features security enhancements like XSM/FLASK for access control.
  • Flexibility
    Xen supports a wide variety of architectures including x86, x86-64, ARM, and even IA-64, making it a versatile option for various use cases.
  • Mature Ecosystem
    Xen has a mature ecosystem with good support from companies like Amazon, IBM, and Citrix, which means extensive documentation, tools, and community support are readily available.
  • Scalability
    Xen can efficiently handle massive workloads and a large number of virtual machines, making it ideal for enterprise environments.

Possible disadvantages of Xen

  • Complex Setup
    Xen can be quite complex to set up and configure compared to other hypervisors like VMware or VirtualBox, often requiring significant expertise and manual configuration.
  • Hardware Compatibility
    While Xen supports a wide range of hardware, users may face compatibility issues, especially with less common or newer hardware, which can be a limiting factor for some deployments.
  • Steep Learning Curve
    Due to its advanced features and configurations, Xen can have a steep learning curve for new users, requiring time and effort to learn effectively.
  • Limited Desktop Use
    Xen is primarily designed for server and enterprise environments and is not as well-suited for desktop virtualization, which could be a drawback for certain use cases.
  • Maintenance Overhead
    Given the complexity and the scope of its feature set, maintaining a Xen environment can require significant ongoing effort, including regular updates and security patches.

Analysis of Proxmox VE

Overall verdict

  • Proxmox VE is a strong choice for businesses and individuals seeking a versatile and reliable virtualization solution, especially in environments that can benefit from open-source flexibility and active community support.

Why this product is good

  • Proxmox VE is considered good for several reasons. It provides a robust virtualization environment with support for both KVM for virtual machines and LXC for containers, enabling flexible and efficient deployment of diverse workloads. The platform offers comprehensive enterprise-ready features such as live migration, high availability clustering, and backup solutions. Its web-based management interface simplifies administration and monitoring, while the extensive community and commercial support options enhance its reliability and usability. Furthermore, it's open-source, allowing for transparency, community contributions, and reducing costs associated with licensing.

Recommended for

  • Small to medium-sized businesses looking for cost-effective virtualization solutions
  • Enterprises needing high availability and data protection features
  • Developers and IT professionals requiring a robust test and development environment
  • Organizations leveraging both containerization and virtual machines

Analysis of Xen

Overall verdict

  • Xen is considered a solid choice for virtualization, especially in enterprise environments that require strong security and stability. Its open-source nature also means that it benefits from contributions from a wide community of developers, ensuring that it stays up-to-date with the latest advancements in virtualization technology. However, it might have a steeper learning curve compared to some other virtualization solutions, and it may not provide as user-friendly a graphical user interface as alternatives like VMware or VirtualBox for less technical users.

Why this product is good

  • The Xen Project is a well-established open-source hypervisor that is known for its performance, security, and flexibility. It allows for the efficient virtualization of x86, ARM, and other CPU architectures and is widely used in data centers to optimize resource usage. Xen's architecture allows for strong isolation and security features, which gives it an advantage in environments needing high security and reliability.

Recommended for

  • Enterprise IT environments requiring robust security features.
  • Organizations looking for open-source virtualization solutions.
  • Businesses needing support for a wide range of architectures including x86 and ARM.
  • Cloud service providers seeking to optimize resource usage with virtualization.
  • Advanced users or organizations capable of managing and maintaining a complex virtualization stack.

Proxmox VE videos

+ Add

Proxmox Virtual Environment 5.2 - Review and Installation

More videos:

  • Review - Homelab / Office Lab Open Source Virtualization XCP-NG & Proxmox Compared
  • Tutorial - Virtualize Everything! - Proxmox Install Tutorial
  • Review - Proxmox VE Full Course: Class 1 - Getting Started

Xen videos

+ Add

Black Mesa: Xen Review - Finally

More videos:

  • Review - Analysis: Black Mesa Xen

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Proxmox VE and Xen)

Proxmox VE

Xen

Cloud Computing
83 83%
Cloud Computing
17% 17
Virtualization
78 78%
Virtualization
22% 22
Virtual Machine Management
76 76%
Virtual Machine Management
24% 24
Cloud Storage
100 100%
Cloud Storage
0% 0

User comments

Share your experience with using Proxmox VE and Xen. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Proxmox VE and Xen

Proxmox VE Reviews

Explore Top VestaCP Alternative: Find the Perfect Control Panel for Your Hosting Needs
Proxmox Virtual Environment is an extensive and user-centric Open Source virtualization platform designed specifically for managing Virtual Appliances and Virtual Machines with ease. This formidable solution seamlessly integrates the KVM hypervisor and LXC containers, along with software-defined storage and networking functionalities, within a unified structure. Proxmox VE...
Source: cyberpanel.net
10 Best VMware Alternatives and Similar Software
Proxmox runs on a modified Linux Kernel that is based on Debian Linux/GNU. You can run Linux and Windows under VMs using Proxmox, with each VM having its own virtualized hardware and components. Proxmox is best for personal servers, whereas VMware is best for businesses.
Source: www.regendus.com
Best Server Virtualization Software for 2021
Proxmox is a lower-cost alternative to Red Hat in Linux-rich environments. It has carved out a niche in Germany and other parts of Europe, particularly among SMBs with IT staff experienced in open source software. Its combination of server virtualization, containers and software defined storage in one product makes it especially attractive to organizations wishing to...
Source: www.serverwatch.com
12 Best FREE Virtual Machine (VM) Software in 2020
Proxmox VE is another platform for virtualization. It helps you to integrates KVM hypervisor and LXC containers and networking functionality on a single platform.
Source: www.guru99.com
Best Server Virtualization Software
Like Red Hat, Proxmox VE has earned a reputation as a reliable and effective virtualization tool for Linux workloads and environments. Proxmox is known for bringing server virtualization, containerization, and software-defined storage capabilities to a single, open-source product, making it a direct competitor to Virtuozzo.
Source: www.dnsstuff.com

Xen Reviews

What are the Top Most Open Source Virtualization Software?
It is often treated as the default standard in Linux hypervisors. Xen is known to be an excellent open source for paravirtualization.
Source: www.hitechnectar.com
Best Server Virtualization Software
A free, open-source virtual machine monitor (VMM), Xen Project was initially designed by a team at Cambridge University. The team later created their own company centered around Xen Project, which was purchased by Citrix. Since then, Xen Project has partnered with The Linux Foundation as part of its work to drive collaborative tools.
Source: www.dnsstuff.com
8 Free & Best Open source bare metal hypervisors (Foss)
Xen is an open-source software platform or Linux hypervisor distro maintained by the global community of developers It supports virtualization for x86, x86_64, IA64, ARM, and other CPU architectures. The Xen hypervisor is an enterprise-class alternative to proprietary virtualization platforms and hypervisors for x86 and IA64 platforms. Besides the open-source, it also...
Source: www.how2shout.com
Best VirtualBox Alternatives & Competitors [Top 7 2019]
Xen is the best VirtualBox alternatives and super functional without altering the hard disk of your computer. Hence, emulate the most popular such as IA-32, IA-64, x86, x86-64 e PowerPC 970. Execute, the best systems without a lag. Experience the same quality on multiple platforms at the same level as your native operating system with Xen.
Source: www.similaralternatives.com
Introduction to Top Open Source Virtualization Tools
Xen is a hypervisor that started out as a Microsoft backed startup at the University of Cambridge and has now risen to become one of the best Linux hypervisors. The Xen Hypervisor is inserted between the server’s hardware and the operating system. This creates an abstraction layer that allows multiple guest operating systems to be concurrently executed on a single physical...
Source: www.getfilecloud.com

Social recommendations and mentions

Xen might be a bit more popular than Proxmox VE. We know about 11 links to it since March 2021 and only 9 links to Proxmox VE. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Proxmox VE mentions (9)

  • Adventures in Homelabbing: From Cloud Obsession to Self-Hosted Shenanigans
    Now that I know I do enjoy homelabbing, I have moved forward with purchasing the last computer parts I need for a basic home server before these tariffs skyrocket the prices even further. For that machine, I will most likely set up Proxmox, and either set up CasaOS on the mini PC or set it up as a node in a Proxmox cluster to serve as a sandbox environment. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Setting up the home lab: Terraform
    When I worked for CBS, I discovered Terraform, which is tool that allows you do define infrastructure as code ("IaC"). I just recently purchased a home lab server (the details of how I have that set up will be discussed in a future article) and installed Proxmox on it. I'd like to improve my DevOps skills, so I thought I'd play with Terraform for my home lab. Eventually I'd like to get my entire home... - Source: dev.to / 11 months ago
  • VMware Kills Off 56 Products
    Proxmox [1] will see a boost in popularity, good. I'm using the free version in combination with the backup server on both small (several RasPi 4's spread over several countres running the 'PiMox' [2] port) as well as medium (DL380) sized systems and find it to be a stable as well as practical platform. [1] https://proxmox.com/en/ [2] https://github.com/pimox/pimox7. - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • Deadbolt & QVPN (OpenVPN)
    Have a look at Proxmox if you decide on running containers and have any old hardware laying around. Source: about 2 years ago
  • A little help with table structure?
    Hey everyone! I'm making a server management panel with Laravel using Proxmox (https://proxmox.com/en/) as the API for directly managing the virtual machines. Source: over 2 years ago
View more

Xen mentions (11)

  • Locked in: the inextricable dependency on VMWare
    Xen is a general purpose type 1 open source hypervisor published under the terms of the GPLv2 license and sponsored by the Linux Foundation. It is a mature piece of software issued from research at the university of Cambridge and has been widely used by many companies including famous public cloud providers such as Amazon to support their AWS infrastructure. Its longevity has fostered a large ecosystem of hardware... - Source: dev.to / about 1 year ago
  • Best virtualization solution with Ubuntu 22.04
    If you want an all around easy to use tool that can manager containers (create on the fly, delete when unnecessary, etc.) look into vagrant. There are also options like xen and virtualbox but they are not so lightweight. All of them are in ubuntu repositories. Source: about 2 years ago
  • Modular building blocks: The case of Amazon
    On the other hand, EC2 was built in isolation by a team of two, Chris Pinkham and Chris Brown, working remotely from South Africa. The idea behind building EC2 was to allow developers to build and run their application on Amazon’s servers, regardless of what type of application it was. The plan was to build EC2 on top of an open source tool called Xen which made it possible to run several applications on one... - Source: dev.to / about 2 years ago
  • Announcing Rust 1.68.0
    There was of course a generation where Xen was the way to make kernel-level containers, but those kernels still had to communicate with a form of ABI. I barely used Xen so I can't say how many of the same concerns apply, but in any case, userland containers won out over kernel containers in the end, and I'm glad for it. Source: about 2 years ago
  • XSAs released on 2022-11-01
    Qubes OS uses the Xen hypervisor as part of its architecture. When the Xen Project publicly discloses a vulnerability in the Xen hypervisor, they issue a notice called a Xen security advisory (XSA). Vulnerabilities in the Xen hypervisor sometimes have security implications for Qubes OS. When they do, we issue a notice called a Qubes security bulletin (QSB). (QSBs are also issued for non-Xen vulnerabilities.)... Source: over 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Proxmox VE and Xen, you can also consider the following products

vSphere - Get started with VMware vSphere editions, the world’s leading server virtualization platform and the best foundation for your apps, your cloud, and your business.

VirtualBox - VirtualBox is a powerful x86 and AMD64/Intel64 virtualization product for enterprise as well as...

QEMU - QEMU (short for "Quick EMUlator") is a free and open-source hosted hypervisor that...

Hyper-V - Install Hyper-V on Windows 10

VMware Workstation - VMware Workstation is a multiple operating system handler to easily evaluate the any other type of new operating systems.

OpenNebula - OpenNebula is an Open Source Cloud & Edge Computing Platform to build & manage Enterprise Clouds. OpenNebula provides unified management of IT infrastructure, avoiding vendor lock-in & reducing complexity, resource consumption, & operational costs 🚀

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