Live Migration

With the built-in live/online migration feature, you can move running virtual machines from one Proxmox VE cluster node to another without any downtime or noticeable effects from the end-user side.
Administrators can initiate this process via shell or with the web interface, making it a simple process. It allows you to easily take a node offline for maintenance or upgrades.

Cluster HA

Proxmox VE HA Manager

During deployment, the resource manager called Proxmox VE HA Manager monitors all virtual machines and containers on the entire cluster and automatically takes action if one of them fails. Proxmox VE HA Manager needs zero setup, works out of the box. In addition, the watchdog-based fencing process greatly simplifies setup.

Proxmox VE HA Simulator

In order to learn and test all Proxmox VE HA features before starting production, the HA simulator is provided. It works out of the box and lets you watch and test the behavior of a real-world three-node cluster with 6 virtual machines.

Backup & Restore

The built-in backup tool (vzdump) creates snapshots of LXC and KVM virtual guests.
In practice, a tar archive of the VM or CT data is created which includes the virtual disks and the configuration data.

Scheduled backup

Backup jobs can be scheduled to run automatically on specific days and times, for selectable nodes and guest systems.

Backup storage

Live KVM backup works for all types of storage, including VM images on NFS, iSCSI LUN, Ceph RBD or Sheepdog. The Proxmox VE backup format is optimized for fast and effective archiving of virtual machine backups (sparse files, out of order data, minimized I/O).

Storage

Proxmox VE uses a very flexible storage model.
Virtual machine images can be stored in local storage or on shared storage such as NFS and SAN (for example using iSCSI or FC) and finally the use of modern RBD (Ceph) for KVM vm is supported.

Centralized management

While many people start with a single node, Proxmox VE can scale up to a large set of clustered nodes. The cluster stack is fully integrated and comes with the default installation.

Unique multi-master design

The integrated management web interface gives you a clear overview of all your KVM guests, Linux containers and even the entire cluster. You can easily manage your virtual machines and containers, storage or cluster from the GUI. There is no need to install a separate, complex and expensive management server.

File system cluster Proxmox

Proxmox VE uses the unique Proxmox Cluster file system (pmxcfs), a database-based file system for storing configuration files.

Command Line Interface (CLI)

For power users who are accustomed to the comfort of the shell, Proxmox VE provides a command line interface to manage all components of the virtual environment.

API REST

Proxmox VE uses a RESTful API. We choose JSON as the primary data format and the entire API is formally defined using the JSON schema. This allows for quick and easy integration for third-party management tools such as custom hosting environments.

Role-Based Administration

You can define granular access for all objects (such as VMs, archives, nodes, etc.) using role-based management for users and permissions. This allows you to define privileges and control access to objects. This concept is also known as access control lists: each authorization specifies a subject (a user or a group) and a role (set of privileges) on a specific path.

Bridged Networking

Proxmox VE uses a network model called “bridge”: all virtual machines can share the same brisge, as if the virtual network cables of all guest VMs are connected to the same virtual switch.
For connecting virtual machines with the outside world, bridges are connected to physical network adapters of host servers that are assigned network configurations.
For greater flexibility, protocols for VLANs (IEEE 802.1Q), bonding features and network aggregations are supported.
In this way it is possible to build complex flexible virtual networks for hosts, leveraging the full power of the Linux networking stack.

Proxmox VE Firewall

Proxmox VE Firewall integrated offers an easy way to protect your IT infrastructure. The firewall is fully customizable and allows for complex configurations via GUI or CLI. You can set firewall rules for all hosts within a cluster or define rules for individual virtual machines and containers. Features such as firewall macros, security groups, IP sets, and aliases help simplify configuration.

Distributed Firewall

While all configuration is stored in the cluster file system, the iptables-based firewall runs on each cluster node and thus provides complete isolation between virtual machines. The distributed nature of this system also offers much higher bandwidth than a centralized firewall solution.

IPv4 e IPv6

The firewall has full support for IPv4 and IPv6. IPv6 support is completely transparent and by default we filter traffic for both protocols. So you don’t need to maintain a different set of rules for IPv6.