Hi all, I'm trying to gauge interest to see if the good people at Parallels should add official support for Proxmox to Parallels RAS. Please be so kind to vote on the poll at the link below: https://x.com/jantytgat/status/1790688271627854204

Yes. Also they should provide the community some additional training and sales materials so we can see about positioning them as a viable alternative to Omnissa and Citrix. Last time I tried to get trial software I was literally attacked by sales people asking to cut a sku or get all of my company cutover. And I was like, sorry dude, just lab testing to see if it works.

I truly believe there is huge opportunity here given all the changes that are happening in the industry: VMware, Omnissa, Citrix, and the list goes on. I think there is a really viable place for an "alternative" stack based on Proxmox/Parallels.

You misspelled Nutanix AHV there @Jan Tytgat;-)

Oh no, I'm definitely happy that AHV is already there @Kees Baggerman. For customers who are not ready to also migrate their hardware to Nutanix, I believe there should be another alternative. Nutanix is in the VMware-class in terms of features, Proxmox (while definitely more than capable for many SMB) just doesn't have all the bells and whistles Nutanix can provide.

I think if Citrix supported Proxmox I would see more traction.

Theres a reason they don’t support it.

Citrix will never support Proxmox, that's for sure. It would negate XenServer, and given they focus on big enterprises, Proxmox is not seen there.

If JP Morgan told Citrix they wanted Proxmox support they would change. Their development efforts will be 100% driven by what the top 2000 want. If it benefits everyone else, that’s a bonus. A Parallels or Workspot capability on Proxmox or even an AHV without the new HCI hardware requirement could quickly become the go to solution for the “not 2000” companies.

"AHV without the new HCI hardware requirement", meaning, being able to re-use servers they already have?

Yes. Run AHV on existing three tier architecture or whatever they have. A big stopping block from some is Nutanix isn't really an option until they are at the time to refresh hardware otherwise.

Do you think it's an all or nothing deal? I don't really see a path where AHV running any anything, attached to any storage, can guarantee that customers are going to get the performance and scalability that we want to provide them. Do you think there's some middle ground here?

If I go in to a customer who bought new hardware last year and is coming up on his VMWare renewal, I can say Let's move to a new hypervisor and later if they stay on premises, let's switch to HCI. But if I say You're paying too much for VMware" and then hit them with a proposal for new hardware, they're not going to buy.

Shouldn't everyone just drive Honda Civics? 😉 I'm kidding, and yes, I understand where you're coming from, and the challenge of the requirement to replace your datacenter with Nutanix HCI gear. That's why I was asking about a middle ground.

If Nutanix still requires their HCI hardware, then Proxmox, XenServer, or XCP-NG and Orchestra will have a better outlook as VMware replacements.

Valid points here

That's fair. But I think the right path is really for Nutanix to deliver the right experience/architecture to customers, not really just to build a better mousetrap because VMWare has created challenges (maybe even temporarily?) for customers on the pricing side of theirs. The challenge with replacing everything in your datacenter to use AHV is totally valid, and I think we'll start to see some flexibility to alleviate that soon.

I agree with Joe, same goes for Azure Stack. Only really valid if you already have the matching supported hardware, otherwise you are ripping and replacing all the metal in your datacenter. If I ran the smaller EUC or hypervisor vendors, I would have use the past quarters to up my support for everything that VMWare, Citrix, and Horizon did, to become that lower cost alternative with matching features and hardware/software support.

@Joe Rizkallah Nutanix just announced at .Next that they are pursuing the ability to run AHV on commodity hardware without purchasing new HCI hardware. I figured they would. https://www.thestack.technology/vmware-evicted-from-treasure-island-nutanix-hits-jackpot-with-its-cio/

Yes we did. 🙂 https://www.nutanix.com/press-releases/2024/nutanix-accelerates-hypervisor-innovation-to-drive-enterprise-modernization Lots of interesting things we’ll be working on.

😎