Virtualization with Proxmox

Proxmox Private Cloud in Germany

Our Proxmox Hosting offers a flexible solution for virtualization and container management. Hosted in Germany and GDPR-compliant, cloudshift® Proxmox Hosting ensures the security and availability of your data in accordance with European data protection guidelines. With NVMe SSD storage and real-time scaling, Proxmox offers maximum performance – ideal for companies that require powerful virtualization solutions. An optional Proxmox cluster enables seamless connection of multiple hosts for high availability, load balancing and simplified infrastructure management. cloudshift® helps you to build your own Proxmox-based private cloud.

Proxmox Hosting Germany
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Benefits of cloudshift® Proxmox Hosting

Proxmox Private Cloud

We plan and create your own Proxmox private cloud on dedicated hardware.

Hosting in Germany

ISO/IEC 27001 certified data center, redundant connection, optional backups and GDPR-compliant data storage in Germany.

Seamless integration into your IT

On request, customized VPN solutions are available to securely connect the Proxmox Cloud to your local infrastructure.

Managed Service

Experienced specialists look after your Proxmox Cloud around the clock, guarantee fast response times and ensure high reliability.

24/7 emergency hotline

In an emergency, we are available for you around the clock if you wish, and we respond immediately to faults.

100% green energy

Our data centers are powered by certified green electricity. This massively reduces CO2 emissions.

Proxmox Hosting Packages & Pricing

Proxmox environments are complex applications and therefore do not have fixed prices. We design the environment individually for each customer as a private cloud solution.

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Proxmox Hosting Add-ons

What sets us apart from other providers? We offer more than just the cloud solution! We plan your Proxmox environment individually on request.

For companies that want to further scale their virtualization infrastructure, we also offer Proxmox Hosting as a cluster solution. A Proxmox cluster allows the connection of multiple hosts (minimum three hosts) to ensure high availability and load balancing. This minimizes downtime and ensures efficient use of resources, which is particularly beneficial for business-critical applications.

Storage options in Proxmox: ZFS or Ceph

Proxmox VE offers several ways to provide storage for virtual machines and containers. Two of the most important options are ZFS and Ceph. Both solutions are proven, but pursue different goals: ZFS is typically a very powerful file system for local storage on a host, while Ceph is a distributed storage system that provides shared storage in a cluster. Both methods are presented below, and their respective advantages and disadvantages are highlighted.

ZFS in Proxmox

What is ZFS?

ZFS is a modern copy-on-write file system with an integrated volume manager. In Proxmox, ZFS is often used as local storage per server, e.g., as a mirror (similar to RAID1) or as a RAIDZ variant (similar to RAID5/6, depending on the configuration). ZFS is particularly known for high data integrity, snapshots, and good performance with appropriately sized hardware.

Advantages of ZFS

  • High data integrity: ZFS works with checksums and thus detects “silent” data corruption. Depending on the redundancy, errors can even be corrected automatically.
  • Snapshots and clones: Snapshots are very fast and are ideal for backups, rollbacks, or testing updates.
  • Good performance with local storage: ZFS can be very performant, especially with SSDs/NVMe, even with many I/O operations.
  • Comparatively simple operation: ZFS is generally easier to plan, maintain, and operate than a distributed storage system.
  • Predictable costs: You don’t need a separate storage cluster or a fast storage network to achieve usable results.

Disadvantages of ZFS

  • No true shared storage in the cluster: ZFS is typically tied to a host. Features such as live migration are possible, but without shared storage, data often has to be migrated along with it, which takes time.
  • Less flexible scaling: Capacity expansions are possible, but not as “linear” and convenient as with distributed scale-out systems.
  • Resource requirements: ZFS benefits greatly from RAM (ARC cache). If resources are limited, this can limit performance.
  • Rebuild/resilvering can take a long time: With large hard drives, recovery processes can take time; this should be taken into account in planning.

Typical use cases for ZFS:

ZFS is particularly suitable for smaller environments (e.g., 1–3 hosts), for setups with a focus on performance and ease of operation, and for installations where shared storage is not a requirement.

Ceph in Proxmox

What is Ceph?

Ceph is a distributed storage system that distributes storage across multiple servers and provides redundant backup. Ceph can be integrated directly into Proxmox, allowing all cluster nodes to access the same storage pool. This makes Ceph particularly interesting for high-availability clusters (HA), live migration, and environments that are expected to grow by adding additional nodes.

Advantages of Ceph

  • True shared storage: All Proxmox hosts can access the same storage. This greatly facilitates live migration and HA.
  • High reliability: When configured correctly, data remains available even if individual disks or entire nodes fail.
  • Horizontal scaling (scale-out): You can often expand capacity and performance by adding more OSDs/nodes.
  • Self-healing and rebalancing: Ceph can automatically redistribute and restore data after failures.
  • Flexibility in redundancy: In addition to classic replication, erasure coding is also possible (depending on requirements) to use storage more efficiently.

Disadvantages of Ceph

  • Greater complexity: Planning, operation, and error analysis are more demanding than with ZFS.
  • High network and hardware requirements: Good performance usually requires a fast network (often 10/25 GbE) and a suitable storage architecture. Undersizing quickly leads to latency problems.
  • More overhead due to redundancy: Put simply, with triple replication, you need significantly more raw capacity than usable capacity. (Erasure coding can improve this, but it is more complex.)
  • Performance highly dependent on design: Ceph can be very good, but only if the cluster size, number of OSDs, media mix (HDD/SSD/NVMe), and network are well matched.

Typical use cases for Ceph:

Ceph is particularly useful in Proxmox clusters with at least three nodes, when shared storage, high availability, and scalability are priorities and the necessary infrastructure (network/hardware/monitoring) is available.

We will work with you to plan the best method for your application.

  • ZFS is often the best choice if you want robust, fast, and comparatively easy-to-operate local storage per host and shared storage is not absolutely necessary.
  • Ceph is particularly suitable if you need shared storage in the cluster, HA, convenient live migration, and scale-out scaling and are willing to accept the additional complexity.

For even more security and flexibility, we also offer load balancing, firewalls and VPN gateways as additional services with Proxmox hosting.

The load balancer ensures that the network load is optimally distributed and that your applications always perform well and remain accessible. By intelligently distributing data traffic across different servers, the performance of your applications is improved and the risk of overload is reduced. This is particularly important for business-critical applications where high accessibility is crucial. Our load balancer solution can be flexibly adapted to your specific needs to ensure optimal availability and reliability.

Our firewall solution protects your virtual infrastructure from unauthorized access and threats. A robust firewall is essential to ensure the security of your data and applications. It provides comprehensive protection against cyber attacks and ensures that only authorized users and data traffic can access your infrastructure. Our firewall can be individually configured to meet the specific security requirements of your company.

The VPN gateway enables a secure connection for remote access, so that you and your employees can access your systems securely at any time. In times of remote work, it is especially important to ensure a secure connection to sensitive company data. Our VPN gateway ensures that all data is transmitted in encrypted form, so that access can be carried out securely even from insecure networks. This gives you the flexibility to access your infrastructure from anywhere without compromising security.

We also offer our Proxmox hosting as a managed service to make managing and operating your infrastructure as easy as possible for you. With the managed service, our experienced specialists take over all the necessary tasks for maintaining your Proxmox environment. This includes regular updates, monitoring system health, managing backups and security measures to ensure that your infrastructure is always up to date and running smoothly. This allows you to focus on your core business while we take care of the technical administration.

Our managed service for Proxmox also includes proactive monitoring of your systems to detect potential problems early and respond quickly. Our technicians are available 24/7 to ensure that your infrastructure is running optimally. This not only ensures high availability and stability, but also gives you peace of mind that your systems are in good hands at all times.

With our managed service, you benefit from a reliable and secure Proxmox infrastructure without having to worry about the technical details. cloudshift® helps you to ensure that your Proxmox private cloud infrastructure takes full advantage of dedicated hardware, powerful data protection with Proxmox Backup Server, Proxmox cluster functionalities, and modern storage and security solutions to make your business flexible and future-proof.

In addition, we offer the optional Proxmox Backup Server and secure Backup Space. The Proxmox Backup Server is a powerful solution for backing up your virtual machines and containers. It enables incremental, deduplicated and encrypted backups, significantly improving the security and efficiency of your data backup. With the optional Backup Space, we also provide you with a secure storage location for your backups outside of the productive infrastructure. This provides additional protection against data loss and ensures that your data can be restored at any time, even in the event of a system failure. By combining Proxmox Backup Server and Backup Space, organizations get a comprehensive and reliable solution to ensure the long-term integrity and availability of their data.

Would you like to switch from VMware® ESXi to Proxmox? On request, we can support you with the migration. Our experts will support you in the seamless transition of your virtual machines and ensure that your applications continue to run with the least possible disruption. With our experience in virtualization, we ensure a smooth migration process so you can quickly reap the benefits of Proxmox.

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Proxmox Private Cloud Hosting: Flexible virtualization and easy migration

With our Proxmox Private Cloud, companies can run their own virtual infrastructure on dedicated hardware. This not only offers the highest performance, but also the control and security that many companies require for sensitive workloads.

The optional Proxmox Backup Server is available as an add-on, providing a comprehensive data protection solution. This allows organizations to efficiently manage their backups and improve both data security and recovery times. Proxmox Private Cloud is particularly attractive for organizations that want to migrate their existing VMware® ESXi infrastructure. Proxmox offers extensive migration tools that enable a seamless transition from VMware® ESXi and help reduce costs without sacrificing functionality.

cloudshift® can help you along the way, so that your Proxmox private cloud infrastructure takes full advantage of dedicated hardware, powerful data protection with Proxmox Backup Server, and cutting-edge virtualization technology to make your business flexible and future-proof.

Proxmox FAQ

Proxmox is an open-source virtualization platform that enables the management of both virtual machines (VMs) and containers. It combines the technologies KVM (for operating system virtualization) and LXC (for containers) in a single, intuitive web interface. This makes Proxmox a flexible and versatile solution for efficiently managing server infrastructures.

The biggest advantage of Proxmox is its cost efficiency. Since it is an open-source solution, there are no expensive license costs associated with proprietary virtualization platforms. This gives companies the opportunity to use a professional and powerful virtualization solution without straining budgets.
In addition, Proxmox is highly flexible. It supports the management of both VMs and containers, which covers a wide range of possible applications. This allows administrators to optimally adapt their infrastructures to the respective requirements. Proxmox can also be operated in cluster structures, which makes it easy to scale the infrastructure and ensures high availability.

The user-friendly Proxmox interface offers comprehensive management of all aspects of virtualization, from network administration to storage and backup integration. Thanks to the comprehensive backup solutions, such as the optional Proxmox Backup Server, companies can reliably secure their data and efficiently organize recovery processes in the event of an emergency.

Another advantage of Proxmox is the large community that continuously supports and develops the project. The active community and regular updates ensure that the platform always meets the latest security standards and that new features are quickly integrated.

All in all, Proxmox offers a powerful and cost-effective solution for companies looking for a flexible virtualization platform that combines high availability, modern features, and extensive security options.

Proxmox is a type 1 hypervisor. A type 1 hypervisor runs directly on the server hardware, without an underlying operating system, often referred to as “bare metal”. Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) uses KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine) as its virtualization technology, which works directly on the server hardware to ensure high performance and efficiency.

Proxmox Backup Server is an open-source data backup and recovery solution designed for use with Proxmox Virtual Environment. It provides an efficient way to back up virtual machines (VMs), containers, and physical hosts by using incremental backups, deduplication, and compression. This makes it particularly powerful and storage-efficient, significantly reducing backup times and storage requirements.

The Proxmox Backup Server works incrementally, which means that after the initial full backup, only changes are backed up. This minimizes storage requirements and increases efficiency. The data is also deduplicated to remove duplicate data and compressed to further optimize storage space. In addition, the solution offers encryption to ensure the security of the backed-up data, especially for sensitive workloads.

Recovery is also designed to be simple and efficient. Organizations can recover individual files, entire containers, or VMs, enabling a quick return to service after an outage or disruption. Thanks to the integration with Proxmox VE, backups can be created and managed seamlessly, and administrators can access all backup features from the central user interface.

Overall, Proxmox Backup Server offers a flexible, cost-effective and secure way to manage data backup and recovery. Its tight integration with Proxmox VE ensures that companies can easily secure their virtualization environment and keep their data under control at all times.

A Proxmox cluster offers numerous advantages that help companies to operate their IT infrastructure efficiently and reliably. A cluster consists of at least three physical hosts that are interconnected and act as a single entity. This configuration makes it possible to distribute workloads, increase availability and facilitate administration.

A major advantage of a Proxmox cluster is its high availability (HA). If one physical host fails, another host in the cluster takes over its tasks. This minimizes downtime and ensures business continuity. This type of redundancy is particularly important for companies that depend on the availability of their applications and cannot afford long outages.

Another advantage is the easy scalability. Companies can expand their infrastructure as needed by simply adding additional hosts to the existing cluster. This makes it possible to flexibly adapt resources to changing requirements and to easily cope with growth spurts without having to restructure the entire infrastructure.

The load balancing aspect of a Proxmox cluster ensures that the workloads are efficiently distributed across all available resources. This results in better performance as the hosts in the cluster are not overburdened and the resources can be used optimally. It also helps to avoid bottlenecks that could arise from an uneven distribution of workloads.

A Proxmox cluster also offers the advantage of centralized management. The entire cluster infrastructure can be managed from a single intuitive interface, significantly reducing administrative overhead. Administrators can manage virtual machines, containers, networks, and backups from a central location, increasing efficiency and minimizing errors.

An additional advantage is the ability to perform live migrations. This means that virtual machines can be moved from one host to another in the cluster without the machine having to be shut down. This is particularly useful when a host requires maintenance or when resources need to be reallocated without interrupting operations.

In summary, a Proxmox cluster offers a powerful, flexible and scalable solution that helps organizations maximize the availability and performance of their IT infrastructure. By combining high availability, centralized management, load balancing and live migration, Proxmox provides a robust virtualization environment that meets the needs of today’s businesses.

Proxmox is an excellent alternative to VMware® ESXi, especially for organizations looking for a cost-effective, flexible, and high-performance virtualization solution. While VMware® ESXi is widely known as an established virtualization platform, Proxmox offers many advantages that make it an attractive choice without sacrificing essential features and stability.

One of the main advantages of Proxmox over VMware ESXi is its cost efficiency. Proxmox is based on open-source technologies and is available without the high license costs associated with VMware® products. This means that companies can operate their virtualization environment much more cost-effectively, especially when it comes to using advanced features that incur additional license fees with VMware®. This makes Proxmox particularly interesting for small and medium-sized companies looking for a budget-friendly solution that does not compromise on professional virtualization.

Another advantage of Proxmox is its flexibility in terms of virtualization technologies. Proxmox combines both KVM for full virtualization of VMs and LXC for container virtualization. This dual approach enables more flexible resource utilization and offers a wider range of deployment options compared to VMware, which focuses primarily on full virtualization. With Proxmox, organizations can manage virtual machines and containers side by side, allowing them to optimally tailor their infrastructure to different use cases.

Proxmox also scores points for centralized management. All hosts in the network can be conveniently managed from a single web interface that integrates all aspects of virtualization, including storage, networking, and backups. By contrast, VMware® often requires the use of multiple tools and interfaces to achieve a comparable level of management depth, which can mean additional complexity and learning overhead.

Proxmox also offers a very good cluster and high availability solution. The easy way to cluster hosts not only allows for better scalability, but also ensures that the infrastructure is designed for high availability. If a physical server fails, other hosts can take over the tasks, ensuring minimal downtime. This high availability feature is fully integrated into Proxmox and does not incur any additional license fees, as may be the case with VMware®.

The migration from VMware® ESXi to Proxmox is relatively easy and well supported. Proxmox provides special migration tools that can be used to import existing virtual machines from VMware environments. Typically, the VMware® OVF export function is used to export a VM that can then be imported into Proxmox. Direct cloning or conversion of vmdk files is also possible. The goal is to make the switch as seamless as possible and to minimize the need for downtime. With cloudshift® as a partner, companies can ensure that the migration is professionally managed to ensure a smooth transition.

Overall, Proxmox is a powerful and cost-effective alternative to VMware® ESXi. It combines high flexibility, central administration, strong high-availability solutions and an excellent cost structure. Companies that want to modernize their virtualization platform or migrate from a more expensive provider will find Proxmox to be a mature and future-proof solution.

You have questions or need an individual offer?

Our cloud experts will be happy to answer your questions about the design, implementation and operation of your applications in the cloud. We look forward to your inquiry!

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