Proxmox 8.3 surge: myths vs facts for teams choosing between VMware

Proxmox VE migration and features

Proxmox VE provides a complete open-source platform for enterprise virtualization. The platform includes KVM for hardware-assisted virtual machines and LXC for Linux system containers. I find the transition from legacy systems easy because the software includes an integrated import wizard. The Proxmox VE 8.2 release, which arrived in April 2024, added an integrated wizard for importing virtual machines from VMware ESXi and an unattended automated installation mechanism along with backup fleecing to reduce local storage strain. Version 8.3 expanded this by adding OVF and OVA import through the web interface. Proxmox VE 9.0, released in August 2025, moved the base system to Debian 13 "Trixie" and added snapshots for thick-provisioned shared LVM storage. Version 9.1 added support for using Open Container Initiative images as templates for LXC containers. Version 9.2, released in May 2026, added a dynamic cluster load balancer and SDN capabilities such as WireGuard and BGP-based fabrics. High availability works by monitoring VMs and containers to restart them on another node if a node fails. Proxmox also includes Proxmox Backup Server, which supports incremental backups, deduplication, and Zstandard compression. The software includes a distributed firewall and supports various storage technologies like Ceph RBD, ZFS, and iSCSI. Proxmox VE 8.4, released in April 2025, added live migration for running VMs using supported mediated devices such as NVIDIA vGPU and virtiofs directory sharing between host and guest. The cluster resource scheduler added resource-affinity and anti-affinity rules in version 9.0. The 8.1 update added Secure Boot compatibility. In version 9.2, the cluster management allows users to disarm and re-arm the high-availability manager cluster-wide during planned maintenance, which suspends HA actions like node fencing while preserving resource states so that guests return to their previous state and placement.

Broadcom and the license shift

Broadcom changed the virtualization market when it closed its acquisition of VMware on November 22, 2023. This shift ended the availability of perpetually licensed products like vSphere and Cloud Foundation on December 13, 2023. AT&T filed a lawsuit in August 2024, claiming Broadcom refused a one-year renewal and increased prices by 1,050%. You should know that these pricing changes forced many teams to re-evaluate their budget. Broadcom did change the accessibility of desktop tools, though. Since November 11, 2024, Broadcom distributes Workstation Pro and Fusion Pro free of charge for personal and commercial use. This change means no license key is required for these tools. Current builds like Workstation Pro 26H1 are available for download. VMware Workstation Pro works on Windows and Linux, while Fusion Pro requires macOS 13 or newer. The product line consists of Workstation Pro and Workstation Player. Workstation Pro allows running multiple virtual machines simultaneously and provides virtual networking. Workstation Player is for single graphical VM operations. VMware was founded in 1998 by Mendel Rosenblum and others. In 2001, the company entered the server market with GSX and ESX. The EUC division, which now goes by the name Omnissa, includes the desktop and app virtualization product Omnissa Horizon. Will the industry move entirely toward open-source hypervisors?

Hypervisor types and hardware

Proxmox VE functions as a bare-metal hypervisor. This provides a performance advantage over Type-2 hypervisors like VMware Workstation. VMware Workstation runs on top of an existing OS, which requires the host to expose Intel VT-x or AMD-V. Proxmox VE handles hardware differently by using a Linux kernel based on the Ubuntu kernel. The platform supports x86-64 and, as of August 2026, provides an officially supported build for Arm64. This Arm64 build works with NVIDIA Grace and Vera architectures. Proxmox also joined the NVIDIA Mission Control partner ecosystem in July 2026. You already know that managing clusters requires stable networking. The Proxmox installer includes the full Debian GNU/Linux 64-bit operating system and the Proxmox VE Linux kernel. It also provides the toolset for administering virtual machines and clusters. The installer allows users to partition local disks with ext4, XFS, BTRFS, or ZFS. For ZFS users, I recommend providing 4GB of RAM plus 1GB of RAM for each TB of RAW disk space. The installer also offers a terminal-mode installation wizard for headless machines. The software allows PCIe device passthrough to virtual machines using IOMMU functionality such as Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi.