Openstack vs. Proxmox: Which Virtualization Solution is Right for Me?
Today many organizations seek cost-effective and scalable cloud solutions (and alternatives to migrate away from VMware), with two players – OpenStack and Proxmox that have emerged as leading open-source virtualization solutions with over a decade of development. Both offer similar features, but they cater to different use cases and scale. In this article we compare OpenStack vs. Proxmox to help you choose the best solution for your business case. Let’s take a closer look.
First things first, what are OpenStack and Proxmox?
What is OpenStack?
OpenStack is an open-source cloud computing platform designed to manage large pools of compute, storage, and networking resources. It is a collection of open-source software modules that integrate together to orchestrate and manage cloud infrastructure resources such as VMs, Volumes, Load-Balancers, Routers and more. It is a great option for enterprises of all sizes looking to build private, hybrid, or public cloud infrastructure. In fact some of the well-known public clouds are running OpenStack – for example OVH, Open Telekom Cloud and Rackspace to name a few.
Openstack’s key features include scalability, support of multi-region cloud deployments and strong multi-tenancy. Also native integration with Kubernetes (KaaS), advanced networking SDN features with Neutron and flexible storage options (Ceph, Swift, NFS, and more than 30 vendor integrations such as NetApp, Pure, HP, Dell, Huawei, etc.) making it a versatile and fully featured cloud solution suitable for all kinds of scales and industries.
Check our previous post to learn more about Openstack.
What is Proxmox?
Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) is an open-source virtualization management platform developed by Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH. It supports two virtualization technologies, namely KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine which is also used in OpenStack) for full virtualization and LXC (Linux Containers) for lightweight container-based virtualization. It has recently gained popularity thanks to its simplicity and ease of use.
Key features of Proxmox include an user-friendly web-based GUI, high availability support, integrated backup, multiple storage options (ZFS, Ceph, LVM, and NFS) and lightweight container virtualization making it a great fit for small businesses and homelabs.
Key differences between OpenStack and Proxmox
| Feature |  OpenStack |
 Proxmox |
|---|---|---|
|
Architecture |
Modular (microservice) and highly scalable with separate components for compute (Nova), storage (Cinder, Swift), networking (Neutron), identity (Keystone), etc. Main hypervisor is KVM, with optional support for ESXi, XEN and LXC
|
Integrated stack with built-in KVM for VMs and LXC support for containers
|
|
User Interface |
Horizon or Skyline dashboards (web-based) and CLI. Third party, commercial UI and billing solutions exist (HostBill, OSIE, Fleio)
|
Simple, user-friendly web-based GUI and CLI.
|
|
API |
Extensive REST API for automation, orchestration and integration with third-party tools supported such as Terraform (OpenTofu), Ansible and backup solutions.
|
API allows users to programmatically manage their virtualization environments using RESTful web services. Provides endpoints for managing virtual machines, containers, storage, networking.
|
|
Deployment Complexity |
High Requires knowledge of architecture, of multiple components and services.
|
Moderate Easier to set up with a web-based management interface. |
|
Base OS Layer |
Has to be deployed to any Linux operating system or in containers.
|
Based on Debian with its own kernel, no other distributions are supported.
|
|
Scalability |
Highly scalable, designed for large-scale infrastructure with multi-region support. Regions can grow to 1000-s of hypervisors.
|
Limited scalability compared to OpenStack, ideal for small clusters between 3-30 nodes.Limited scalability compared to OpenStack, ideal for small clusters between 3-30 nodes.
|
|
Storage |
Supports Object, Block and Share types with a variety of backends (Ceph, Swift, LVM, NFS, NetApp, Pure, HP, etc.) and additional features including access control.
|
Supports Block and Share types via ZFS, Ceph, LVM, and NFS. Very limited support for storage vendor solutions.
|
|
Networking |
Advanced SDN networking with Neutron, supports security groups, complex routing and multi-tenancy (ML2, OVS/OVN); VLAN, VxLAN and GRE tunnels; VPNaaS, L2GW. Load Balancing with Octavia.
|
Basic SDN networking (VLAN, DHCP, FRR, VxLAN)
|
|
Multi-Tenancy |
Yes, built-in support with the concept of Keystone Domains, Projects and Sub-projects and a complete configurable RBAC.
|
Very limited, requires 3rd party solutions such as multiportal.io
|
|
High Availability |
Requires third-party tools or advanced configuration (e.g. HAproxy, Pacemaker, Keepalived)
|
Built-in High Availability and clustering features
|
|
Licensing and Costs |
Open source with optional but often required enterprise support or custom development
|
Open source with optional subscriptions to receive official packages and updates
|
|
Use Cases |
IaaS & PaaS for public and private clouds, enterprise-grade multi-tenancy, and large-scale automation. Lots of customization options with drivers and integrations.
|
Small business virtualization, homelabs, test and dev environments where multitenancy is not required. Limited customization options.
|
The Business Model behind OpenStack and Proxmox
Both OpenStack and Proxmox are offered as open-source software. However, the business models and target audience differ quite a lot. Let’s check in more details.
Openstack
Openstack follows a community-driven approach. It is governed by the OpenInfra Foundation (previously known as OpenStack Foundation), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting open-source cloud technologies and OpenStack specifically. The foundation itself is financed by its supporting members with different levels of membership and contributions depending on the size of organization.
OpenStack is licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, ensuring broad usage rights and flexibility for both end-users and companies that want to offer public or private cloud solutions with OpenStack.
OpenStack is backed by a broad ecosystem of contributors, including major cloud providers and enterprise IT vendors, fostering an open development community. The source code of OpenStack is released simultaneously to all users ensuring equal access and transparency in development. With over 2000 active contributors both individuals and organizations, a regular voting for board of directors and Project Technical Leads (PTL), OpenStack can be considered a truly open-source software.
Proxmox
Proxmox on the other hand is backed by Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH, a for-profit company based in Austria. It is operating under the GNU Affero General Public License (AGPL) v3, which requires users who modify and distribute the software to share their changes, unlike with OpenStack.
While the Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is free and open-source, Proxmox offers a freemium model where users can access a free community-supported version and enterprise users can purchase paid support subscriptions, which provide access to stable repositories, security updates and professional assistance. In other words, enterprise features, stability and support are gated behind paid subscriptions.
While both organizations are actively promoting open source, there is a potential licensing risk with Proxmox with a for-profit company behind it. In the recent years we have seen a number of companies alternating the licensing terms of their open-source solutions to charge money for any commercial usage. Big examples are HashiCorp with Terraform, Elastic with Elasticsearch and RedHat with CentOS. Such risk is less likely to happen with OpenStack that is governed by a non-profit, community-driven foundation.
In case you are concerned with the possibility of licensing changes, you should probably consider the implications of picking Proxmox over OpenStack for your organization.
OpenStack vs. Proxmox: Which One is for Me?
 |
 |
|---|---|
|
Choose OpenStack if.. |
Choose Proxmox if… |
|
…you need an easy-to-use virtualization platform with easy setup. …your infrastructure is limited to a single cluster or a few small clusters. …your team/organisation is limited to a single tenant without the need for advanced permission separation or access management. …you want built-in VM backup, high availability, and snapshot management out of the box.
|
…you need an easy-to-use virtualization platform with easy setup. …your infrastructure is limited to a single cluster or a few small clusters. …your team/organisation is limited to a single tenant without the need for advanced permission separation or access management. …you want built-in VM backup, high availability, and snapshot management out of the box.
|
Can Proxmox replace OpenStack?
Not entirely.
While Proxmox is a great virtualization tool and uses similar technologies under the hood (KVM, Ceph, OVS like OpenStack) and it can be used as a simple VMware alternative, it lacks advanced SDN and LBaaS features, Kubernetes orchestration, and extensive storage drivers support found in OpenStack. OpenStack features come from numerous integrations and drivers, supporting all major vendors. The OpenStack upstream development process with Zuul CI allows 3rd party vendors to integrate their tests to ensure fully driver compatibility between the changes. With Proxmox the vendor and feature options are much more limited, therefore enterprises tend to pick OpenStack over Proxmox.
Openstack’s complexity comes with its benefits: OpenStack provides rich API support with SDK in multiple languages and ready Ansible/Terraform support for implementing IaC (Infrastructure as Code). OpenStack Heat component can further be used to offer cloud native IaC similar to AWS CloudFormation. All that allows companies to provide a wide range of IaaS/PaaS/SaaS services with Openstack. While Proxmox also has its own API its use case is to ease up a bit of administrators life and not for advanced integrations.
Closing Thoughts
Both OpenStack and Proxmox are powerful and well established projects with more than a decade of development, but they serve different needs and segments. OpenStack is a full-blown cloud platform best suited for enterprises looking for a scalable cloud platform, where Proxmox is ideal for small businesses needing a simple virtualization without mutitenancy or advanced features. A small Proxmox cluster can be operated with a small team of 1-3 administrators, where OpenStack deployments typically require domain knowledge of its components (Nova, Neutron, Cinder, Keystone, etc.) and teams supporting OpenStack installations tend to be larger than 1-3 people.
Need Help with OpenStack Deployment?
At Cloudification, we specialize in VMware to OpenStack migration and private cloud solutions based on MAAS, OpenStack, Kubernetes and Ceph. Reach out today to future-proof your IT infrastructure.
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