Proxmox Virtual Environment
Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE or PVE) is an open-source software server for virtualization management. It is a hosted Type-1 hypervisor that can run operating systems including  Linux and Windows on x64 hardware. It is a Debian-based Linux distribution with a modified Ubuntu LTS kernel and allows deployment and management of virtual machines and containers. Proxmox VE includes a web console and command-line tools, and provides a REST API for third-party tools. Two types of virtualization are supported: container-based with LXC (starting from version 4.0 replacing OpenVZ used in version up to 3.4, included), and full virtualization with KVM.
It includes a web-based management interface.

Proxmox VE is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, version 3.

History 
Development of Proxmox VE started when Dietmar Maurer and Martin Maurer, two Linux developers, found out OpenVZ had no backup tool and no management GUI. KVM was appearing at the same time in Linux, and was added shortly afterwards.
The first public release took place in April 2008.  It supported container and full virtualization, managed with a web-based user interface similar to other commercial offerings.

Features
Proxmox VE is an open-source server virtualization platform to manage two virtualization technologies: Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) for virtual machines and LXC for containers - with a single web-based interface.
The source is open, based on the GNU AGPL, v3. The company sells optional subscription-based customer support. With a subscription, users get access to an enterprise software repository.

Storage model
Proxmox VE supports local storage with LVM group, directory and ZFS, as well as network storage types with iSCSI, Fibre Channel, NFS, GlusterFS, CEPH.

High-availability cluster
Proxmox VE can be clustered across multiple server nodes.

Since version 2.0, Proxmox VE offers a high availability option for clusters based on the Corosync communication stack. 
Individual virtual servers can be configured for high availability, using the built-in ha-manager. If a Proxmox node becomes unavailable or fails the virtual servers can be automatically moved to another node and restarted.
The database- and FUSE-based Proxmox Cluster filesystem (pmxcfs) makes it possible to perform the configuration of each cluster node via the Corosync communication stack.

Live migration
At least since 2012, in a HA cluster, live virtual machines can be moved from one physical host to another without downtime. Since Proxmox VE 1.0, released 29.10.2008 KVM and OpenVZ live migration is supported.

Virtual appliances
Proxmox VE has pre-packaged server software appliances which can be downloaded via the GUI. It is possible to download and deploy appliances from the TurnKey Linux Virtual Appliance Library.

Data backup
PVE includes backup software, vzdump, which allows data compression and on-line operation (snapshot mode). Since 2020 there's also an advanced client-server software for that called Proxmox Backup Server (PBS), which offers deduplication, compression, authenticated encryption and incremental backups.

See also

 Comparison of platform virtualization software 
 Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)

References

External links

 Project wiki

2008 software
Debian-based distributions
Free software programmed in Perl
Free virtualization software
Perl software
Software using the GNU AGPL license
Linux distributions