People ask me why I chose Proxmox VE. With so many platforms out there: Red Hat, Hyper-V, Xen, Nutanix.. Why this one?
The answer’s pretty simple. I trust it, and the people around it.
It’s not just about features or price. It’s not even just about control, though I care about that too. It’s about whether you can rely on the platform. Whether the people behind it give a damn. Whether there’s a community that’s there when things break. Not for points or likes but because they want to help.
The Fall of Trust in the Big Players
I’ve been around just long enough to remember when VMware had that. Even when the software wasn’t perfect, you’d get a response. The community was always buzzing with people sharing solutions, swapping scripts, helping each other out late at night. You felt like you were part of something.
That’s dead now.
Broadcom came in swinging. They decimated partners, restructured products and packaging (along with the price), pulled the rug out from under customers who’d been loyal for years, and straight up told tall porkies without technically “lying”. The product didn’t get better. The support didn’t get stronger. The trust was destroyed. And with it, the community that made VMware so powerful.
Red Hat used to feel grounded too. But now it’s under IBM, and the vibe has changed. There’s a distance. It feels like decisions are made by people who haven’t deployed a thing in years. People solving for strategy, not reality.
Xen’s still kicking, still open, still solid but most of the momentum has moved elsewhere. It’s a good engine, but not the one I want to build a future on.
Hyper-V? That one’s tricky. It “works”. But it comes with strings. It feels like every release nudges you deeper into Azure and before you know it, your estate lives in Azure while your account rep gets another jetski. You’re locked into choices you didn’t realise you were making.
And then there’s Nutanix. Honestly, they just want to be VMware with a different logo. But they’re basically owned by private equity, and we all know how that story goes (read: enshittification). The pricing’s already creeping into familiar territory. Talk about deja vu.
Why Proxmox VE Feels Different
Proxmox VE feels different.
The roadmap is out in the open. The licensing is fair and makes sense. You can interact with the contributors online. You can see the change logs, the patches, and the reasons behind decisions. You don’t have to worry that support will vanish because some investor wanted a yacht.
A Community That Gives a Damn
And the community is what really gets me: it reminds me of VMware’s golden days. There’s energy again. The forums are alive and Reddit is full of people solving problems together. Bluesky has admins showing off their setups, writing guides, answering questions. It’s not corporate polish. It’s real people building real things and sharing what they learn.
That matters more than most people realise. The strength of any platform lives and dies by the people using it. And right now, Proxmox has the right people behind it. Not just developers and vendors like Multiportal.io and Veeam, but actual users. People who care.
The VMware community used to be one of the best in IT. It created value that Broadcom doesn’t know how to exploit for profit so they’re tearing it down piece by piece. VMUG’s still there, but it’s not the same. You can’t fake community.
A Future That Respects Autonomy
So yeah, I’m going in a different direction.
I’m building a future where Australian businesses can get real advice and hands-on implementation for solutions built on Proxmox VE. Where support is local, service is personal, and trust is earned through action, not outsourced or automated away.
I’m backing Proxmox VE not because it’s cheap, or open source for the sake of it, but because it stands for something better. A future where vendors do right by their users and where doing the right thing still counts for something.
