Free Proxmox server - Good or Bad idea ?

msatt

As many of you know we are supplying a free VPS for Open Source developers. With templates for Debian, Ubuntu and Alpine.
For developers, would it be beneficial to include a Proxmox template so they can install vms or lxcs inside their proxmox environment?
They could snapshot, vnc, backup, encrypt etc etc.
This would still be working within the constraints of NAT & IPv6 but the template will be configured to handle that.
My main concern would be support, it would have to be community driven.
So is it worth the effort and can you think of any other good or bad points?

Thanks for your time.
Mike

stxsh

Mike!

First of all, thanks for your service to the open-source community!

QQ: are you talking about nested virtualization (developers get a Proxmox VM and run their own CTs/VMs), or Proxmox running directly on the bare metal and handing out guests?

If it’s the former, I’d lean towards Alpine Linux or Debian + Incus instead. Incus is API/CLI driven, easy to automate, less demanding on the hypervisor, and a shared repository for community driven configurations makes sense here. Proxmox is a much larger, highly-privileged stack and tends to push people toward the GUI, which can get messy in a shared, community-supported environment.

Just my two cents if that's what you were thinking.

msatt

@stxsh Thanks for your support / comments.
I am talking about nested virtualization so developers can run what they wish.
Understand Proxmox 'complexity' but it is very flexible with VNC, snapshots, backups etc.
So would a developer prefer a gui driven or api/cli environment or just a single VM which they build ?
I am not aware of Incus so will certainly look at it.
We could perhaps allow a developer to choose Incus or Proxmox, but this is effectively doubling the support role.
As this is all free support is a big problem.

jcn50

@msatt said: As this is all free support is a big problem.

I think this will become a support hell.. It will be more beneficial for FOSS to "offer" different packages (instead of the current single one: 2 VCPU, 4GiB Ram, 64GiB hdd as people might just want to run workflows without having a big container?).
When I think about developing something I do not think so much about running the virtualization layer, I'd actually want to focus on the upper layers.
Personally I view virtualization as a way of using idle ("wasted") server resources, so it is the satisfaction of cramming more software on a piece of hardware to maximize its use.

msatt

Thanks @jcn50
Agreed about support - Proxmox can seem intimidating when you first use it
As far as different package sizes - I think everyone would just choose the largest so we need some restriction.
I suppose it all depends what you are developing as to which layers you need, perhaps creating a docker template may be a simpler solution rather than nested virtualization?
Agreed about using idle resources but for FOSSVPS it is all about sharing those resources.

I would also say that for me (sysadmin / developer) continuous learning is important, so going down to a lower layer whether it be Proxmox, Incus or whatever is always beneficial.