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Review of the Dutch Proxmox Day 2025

On September 25, 2025, we attended the Dutch Proxmox Day 2025 in Ede (Netherlands) – and I must say: the event was a complete success. Organized by Tuxis B.V. at the Hotel Belmont in the Veluwe region, the day offered an excellent mix of expert presentations and valuable exchange.

Thanks to the Hosts

A heartfelt thank you to the Tuxis team: For the invitation as a speaker, for the trust placed in us, and for the perfect organization. Yes — this blog article is coming a bit late, but as they say: better late than never.

My Perspective as a Speaker

As a speaker, I had the pleasure of being part of an exciting program. At the same time, I was a participant: both at the same time – that’s what makes such days special. I would like to highlight a few presentations:

• Aaron Lauterer (Linux Software Developer at Proxmox Server Solutions) – “Let’s get technical with a Proxmox developer”: A look at upcoming features of Proxmox VE. The upcoming integration of OCI containers (aka Docker) is particularly exciting.
• Rob Turk (Senior Presales Systems Engineer at Veeam) – “Save the data”: Clearly shows that Proxmox has now arrived in the enterprise world.
• Mark Schouten (CTO at Tuxis) – “Cool stuff you can do with Proxmox”: Proxmox Backup Server in interaction with ZFS, how to make the whole thing more performant and what unexpected problems with SCSI and Western Digital have occurred, Mark Schouten told us about it
• Alexander Wirt – “Balancing workloads in Proxmox”: My own contribution with a focus on the project ProxLB of my esteemed colleague Florian Hoberg, which distributes virtual machines evenly across nodes, again shows the advantages and OSS and open interfaces. These make it easy to add missing functionality and thus compete with the industry giants.
• Robbe Van Herck (Support & Maintenance Engineer at International Polar Foundation) – “Proxmox on Antarctica”: Proxmox in extreme use – at the other end of the world and very far from everyday data center life. Robbe was able to show well that Proxmox also works in the most remote corners of the earth, the other challenges are more exciting here – such as hardware that is overwhelmed by the low temperatures.
• Han Wessels (Operations System Engineer at ESA) – “Challenged to run Proxmox out of this world”: Why Proxmox can also be operated on the ISS or in space – technology meets vision. Han vividly described the challenges that arise, such as the vibration during the launch of the carrier rocket or the radiation that significantly shortens the lifespan of storage.

I was able to take away many impulses – both technically and ideally. And I had good conversations that will certainly pay off further.

Networking & Exchange

The informal part was just as valuable as the program: during the breaks, at lunch or at the get-together in the afternoon, we made new contacts, gained interesting insights and met old acquaintances. It is precisely these moments that make a conference come alive.

Outlook

We are already looking forward to next year. When the Tuxis team calls again, we will be happy to be there again. Many thanks again to all those involved, all speakers and all participants – see you again. In between, this December there will be the first Open Source Virtualization Gathering at our company.

ProxLB – Version 1.1.0 of the Advanced Loadbalancer for Proxmox Clusters is Ready!

Finally, it’s here – and it’s no April Fool’s joke! The long-awaited version 1.1.0 of ProxLB has been officially released! This new version features a complete code refactoring, making maintenance easier and laying the groundwork for future expansions. Additionally, numerous bugs have been fixed, and more features have been implemented. ProxLB is the result of the dedication of our employee Florian Paul Azim Hoberg, better known as gyptazy, who has applied his knowledge and passion to create a powerful open-source solution for Proxmox clusters. We – as credativ GmbH – believe in the power of open-source software and support him by spending time to this project during the business time.

Closing the gap

ProxLB fills the gap left by the absence of a Dynamic Resource Scheduler (DRS) in Proxmox. As a powerful load balancer, it intelligently migrates workloads or virtual machines (VMs) across all nodes in the cluster, ensuring optimal resource utilization. ProxLB takes CPU, memory, and disk usage into account to prevent over-provisioning and maximize performance.

Automatic maintenance mode handling

One of the standout features of ProxLB is its maintenance mode. When one or more nodes are placed in maintenance mode, all VMs and containers running on them are automatically moved to other nodes, ensuring the best possible resource utilization across the cluster. This allows for seamless updates, reboots, or hardware maintenance without disrupting ongoing operations.

Custom affinity rules

Furthermore, ProxLB offers extensive customization options through affinity and anti-affinity rules. Administrators can specify whether certain VMs should run together on the same node or be deliberately separated. This is particularly useful for high-availability applications or specialized workloads. Another practical feature is the ability to identify the optimal node for new guests. This function can be easily integrated into CI/CD pipelines using tools like Ansible or Terraform to automate deployments and further enhance cluster efficiency. You can see how this works with ProxLB and Terraform in this example.

ProxLB also stands out with its deep integration into the Proxmox API. It fully supports the Access Control List (ACL), eliminating the need for additional SSH access. This not only enhances security but also simplifies management.

Whether used as a one-time operation or in daemon mode, ProxLB is a flexible, transparent, and efficient cluster management solution. Thanks to its open-source license, users can customize the software to meet their specific needs and contribute to its further development.

Download

ProxLB can be installed in many different ways where it can operate and run inside of an dedicated VM (even inside the Proxmox cluster), on bare-metal, on a Proxmox node itself or on containers like LXC or Docker. The project also provides ready to use container images that can directly be used in Docker or Podman. The project’s docs provide you a more detailed overview of the different types and ways to install and use ProxLB, which can simply be found right here. While you can find below resources for a quick-start you should think about switching to the project’s Debian based repository for long-term usage.

Conclusion

With version 1.1.0, ProxLB lives up to its reputation as an indispensable tool for Proxmox administrators, especially for those transitioning from VMware. Try out the new version and experience how easy and efficient load balancing can be in your cluster! We are also happy to support you with the integration and operation of ProxLB in your cluster, as well as with all other Proxmox-related topics, including planning a migration from other hypervisor technologies to Proxmox!