Portainer vs. Proxmox VE

We do have a couple of users who are new to Docker and the Linus shell environment. Portainer makes it easy for them to quickly deploy stacks of containers with its web editor to configure docker-compose files with an easy-to-use GUI. Not only does this save time, but it also encourages new users to interact more positively with Docker and Portainer in general.

We used Proxmox to implement private cloud services, for clusters
of a small number of servers, from 3 to 11 with and without high
availability. Allways with ZFS file systems, and we used to install the
root pool in SSDs mirrored and use other pools with RAID 10 in groups of
four, for the virtual machines and containers, for the backups and snapshots, we used magnetic disks with RAID 10, in groups of four. Do
not use an even number of servers because does not facilitates the
implementation of High Availability, because the corosync service must
have an odd number of servers to detect a failed server for the quorum
system. We used a variety of servers, from clone PCs with AMD Ryzen with 6 cores and 12 threads with 64 GB of RAM no ECC, to high end servers with 64 cores and 128 threads per cpu and 2 cpus per server, with AMD EPYC Rome or Milan, 2 terabytes of RAM ECC.

Incentivized

• Separating server maintenance with application development, providing a clear user interface for developers who don't want to worry about the underlying server.
• RBAC for container deployment linked to a SAML IDP, not something particularly easy in a native Docker instance but point and shoot in Portainer, allowing the use of Azure / Okta etc to provide user access.
• Image management with multiple repositories is super clear and reduces incidents

Incentivized

• BackUp System, provides extensive propiertes and verifications. An exclusive server for BackUp Administration (PBS)
• Hardware Customization. You can select several properties to adapt the hardware to your needs
• Easy administration. You will be able to manage the server with easily accessible tools such as the web console and usage statistics.
• Certificates Administration.

• When setting up static IPs for a new container, having the used ones for a specific network at hand would be cool or something like a mini IPAM of some sort...
• Using the developertools to see "oh, it's a 40x or 500" when something doesn't seem to load because the ui just states "Didn't work" is kinda annoying. expandable toasts or something would be nice.

Incentivized

• Can't manage ZFS replication or snapshots as easily as I'd like
• Encrypted disks aren't easily deployed in VMs
• Moving disks between VMs is not automated

Incentivized

It is an excellent tool.

Proxmox VE provides the most capable, yet stable virtualization platform in the market today. Licensing options are also competitive and cost-effective for support, and support is extremely fast and knowledgable of getting issues resolved as quickly and soundly as possible.

Incentivized

It is a clear UI, and it does what it sets out to do, very well

Incentivized

Out of every product I have used for this, Proxmox VE is the most concise, clear, and functional I have ever seen. I continue to use Proxmox VE even after occasionally comparing alternatives available because of it's usability, design concept, and great support of features. It's very unlikely I will find a product that can even compete with Proxmox VE in every angle of what Proxmox VE provides.

Incentivized

Proxmox VE's ha-cluster functionality is very much improved, though does have a not-very-often occurrence of failure. In a 2-node cluster of Proxmox VE, HA can fail causing an instance that is supposed to migrate between the two nodes stop and fail until manually recovered through the command-line tools provided. Other than this, the HA clustering capability of Proxmox VE has proven to be reliable in 3 or more clustered environments with much less chance of these failures to occur.

Incentivized

Proxmox VE's interfacing is always fast to load, both the Web interface and the command-line tool interfaces. Reporting is practically real time almost all the time, and you can see everything in mere seconds, easily able to identify if something is wrong or it everything is in tip-top shape as always desired

Incentivized

One of their staff members jumped on a video call immediately with me and led me through the problem and solution during a quick session of screen sharing. In this day and age that is above and beyond, especially when it comes to software. It took approximately 5-10 minutes to diagnose and fix, including pleasantries!

They are fast, understanding, very intelligent, know their product very well, fast, responsive, and concise. Need I say more?

Incentivized

It is really easy. Just follow the documentation.

Incentivized

It worked, was easy and super fast to deploy, and provided everything we needed in a matter of minutes

Incentivized

I am using Rancher in Kubernetes environments. It was really the first product I used with it and never really had time to test out how well Portainer behaves on Kubernetes. For the exact same thing - Docker Swarm management I used Swarmpit some time ago, but I like Portainer better, even though Swarmpit has better cluster visualization then Portainer. Portainer 5 node business edition is really a big plus for me, since it has some really nice features.

Incentivized

Proxmox VE is cheaper than VMware, especially upscaling an HA architecture. Compared with other free or less expensive solutions, Proxmox VE is high compatible with more types of hardware solutions and more VM types. From my point of view, Proxmox VE has no competitor at the same price level, it offers the most complete and production-ready HA solution.

Incentivized

Proxmox VE provides everything you need to quickly add new storage mediums, network and local, as well as networking interfaces, such as using Linux standard bridges and now Open-vSwitch bridges which can be even more scalable than before. Proxmox VE 4.0 dropped support for OpenVZ in favor of the more well supported and native LXC and made an upgrade path to it very simple.

Incentivized

• Increased productivity: Portainer's user-friendly interface and streamlined container management can help increase the productivity of IT teams.
• Cost savings: By simplifying container management, Portainer can help reduce the time and resources required to manage container environments, potentially leading to cost savings.

Incentivized

• Proxmox has allowed to us to do more with less. We can invest in a single (or multiple if clustering) host with a decent specification, and run most of our infrastructure on it.
• Open source technologies allowed us to re-use previous skills and knowledge. There was very little onboarding required because we already knew Debian, KVM, ZFS, etc.
• Virtualisation has vastly reduced the amount of time required to maintain all our systems. Everything is so much more organised and lends itself to automation (with Ansible, in our case).

Incentivized