Proxmox VE vs. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server

Proxmox VE is a virtualization platform that provides a range of features and functionalities suitable for various scenarios. Here are some specific scenarios where Proxmox VE is well suited and some scenarios where it might not be the best choice:Well-suited scenarios:Virtualization of server workloads: Proxmox VE is well suited for virtualizing server workloads such as web servers, mail servers, database servers, and other similar applications. Its high-performance virtualization capabilities allow these workloads to run smoothly and efficiently.Hosting multiple virtual machines (VMs): Proxmox VE is ideal for hosting multiple VMs on a single server. It provides efficient resource management, allowing users to easily allocate resources to each VM.Clustered environments: Proxmox VE is a great choice for clustered environments. It supports clustering and can easily manage multiple servers, providing high availability and load balancing for mission-critical applications. Less appropriate scenarios: Limited hardware resources: Proxmox VE requires significant hardware resources to run efficiently. If you have limited hardware resources, it might not be the best choice. Simple applications: If you only need to run a single, simple application, Proxmox VE might be overkill. Other virtualization platforms or even a basic web hosting service might be more appropriate.

SLES is a good fit for running supported enterprise applications like SAP, HANA, oracle,.. We use it to run all our SAP workloads, and so far everything has worked great. All libraries are right in the repository, all documentation is correct and the support answers really fast in case you have problems.

Incentivized

• ZFS storage out of the box. The integration with ZFS is fantastic. You can easily create pools to store your VM images and data on, and the Proxmox web UI provides an easy way to check drive health, ZFS scrub status, etc.
• Great web UI. Practically everything configurable is available to do so from the web user interface. You'll rarely need to drop to the command line for administrative tasks, unless you want to, in which case you can do that too. The UI also provides graphs and visualisations to help you keep check of how everything is performing.
• Easy to setup a high availability cluster. Although Proxmox VE works perfectly well on a single server, you can also install it on multiple hosts and setup a cluster.
• Uses a Debian core system with an Ubuntu based kernel. This means everything to do with the base operating system is tried and trusted. We use a lot of Debian and Ubuntu installs, so having this run underneath Proxmox VE was an added bonus for us.

Incentivized

• Seems Custom made for SAP workloads
• Longest standing collaboration between platform and apps
• SuSE for SAP works seamless on-prem, on SAP Cloud, Azure, AWS & GCP
• Support for oldest SP of SuSE so our customers can run their business without fear

• The web UI does not work as well on mobile devices. It is useable, but a mobile optimised / responsive UI would be nice to have. There is a mobile app, so that may alleviate this issue, but I have not yet tried it.
• Support in the community forums could be better. There are paid support plans, but new users trying out the software will not have access to this. Answers to questions can sometimes be terse, and I can imagine this may put some people off.
• The wiki is a bit hit and miss with certain topics. I've often seen outdated or missing information, and the whole thing looks like it could do with some polish. I'd love to see it opened up for the community to add to.

Incentivized

• The support window for service packs after a new SP is released is too short.
• Community engagement is low.
• There are times when supported packages fall too far behind and create compatibility issues with applications. The Open Build Service usually provides a way around this, though.

Incentivized

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

The interface is easy to use for most of it, but still lacks screens for some configurations. Also, a few of the screens are not as intuitive as they could be. This is specially true with disk and network configuration, where some graphic/visual representations of the configurations would be very useful

Incentivized

For the breadth of services, features and overall performance, I believe Suse Linux is a great choice for any enterprise. It still has to grow a bit in areas like online help forums and documents, but we are pretty much satisfied with our choice.

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

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

Incentivized

It's great for basic support issues. But it's less suited for anything that is either obscure or uncommon, and it is very hard to escalate, unless you've built a relationship with your vendor/salesperson.

Incentivized

Third party training was fast but mostly unnecessary as we were already Unix trained and Linux familiar

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

Incentivized

Proxmox Virtual Environment is better, less costly, it has better CAPEX and OPEX, is open source and more robust and flexible.

It is an agnostic product, one can use a PC clone or a high end server to install it, and it works flawlessly on both.

The product has a large life cycle, is stable and has few problems and vulnerabilities than the other propietary products.

Incentivized

SUSE Linux Enterprise Server works well with the SUSE Manager, it really simplifies everything. We also do have SUSE 4 SAP, and the SUSE Manager is able to manage them all, even other (up to date) Linux distributions. Patching has never been that easy and the SALT integration is also working without any problems.

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

We have successfully deployed on physical servers, VMs and in cloud all over the globe from templates of our own design

• Due to the open source nature of Proxmox, we have no licensing costs while training our employees
• We've migrated 100% of our clients to Proxmox and have found improved uptime, and flexibility.
• In the 10 years of using Proxmox, we've yet to lose any data or not be notified of backup issues.

Incentivized

• It allows a very small team to manage a large number of servers, due to its automation and manageability.
• SAP supports it very well, making it straightforward to manage. There are also "recipes" for Oracle which has all of the requisites to install an Oracle DB; which helps with deployment immensely.
• It lets us run large SAP instances in SLES on Power, helping us with support, manageability, and performance.
• Support costs are high, but required for SLES for SAP.

Incentivized