Hi All, I'm part of the association in my school, and we're looking to add new servers. I'm searching for a tool to manage the servers, create VMs, troubleshoot, and backup data. We currently use an old version of Proxmox VE, but nobody likes this solution, and we want a more recent and reliable solution.
I heard that Docker could be used for that but is it really reliable? Does anyone know a free tool (ideally open source) that will allow us to manage our servers efficiently?
Thanks.
Docker is safe in the sense that it works reliably. However, it does not separate a process from the machine on which it is running. If you have a virus in your docker container, then it could spread to other docker containers or onto the host machine. A VM should isolate a virus and prevent spread outside the VM but they are usually resource intensive. Docker containers, on the other hand, use less resources and load more quickly than a virtual machine.
VirtualBox is a free, open source, solution for creating virtual machines, but the extension pack may not be free. On Windows you could use Hyper-V at no additional cost beyond the price of a server edition. Lots of people use VMware but I have very little experience with it.
hi, which kind of servers? I would use Docker only if you need also Windows containers. If you're running a full Linux architecture I would use Terraform to setup and the server basic configurations (dns, hostnames, ips...) and then some kind of automation pipeline (jenkins...) to spawn podman containers to do the needed work (rsync/borgBackup to external disks, postgres transactions...) and then leave the VM server clean as before. https://itslinuxfoss.com/10-best-linux-backup-tools/ https://8gwifi.org/docs/podman-jenkins.jsp
If you have the Docker license and want to pay that for some reason you can skip the agent setup and spawn docker containers directly from the pipeline https://www.jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/docker/
Can you give a little bit more detail about why you didn't like ProxMox VE? ProxMox VE had multiple enhancements in the latest versions. Maybe it is worth trying it.
Fully agree.
It is really a good product. I'm really interested to know what you don't like in this product.
Running a single instance of proxmox with severals VMs on it at work for 2 years now without problems.
We will soon upgrade to a HA environment with 3 nodes.
VM Backups are integrated in the environment.
And BTW, it is possible to use containers (LXC) in proxmox as well.