Est. Reading Time: 16 Mins Prereq: Open Source Basics
Architectural Track // Hypervisor 03

Alternative Stacks

Tagline: The Broadcom-Exit Path.

Technical exploration of Proxmox, KVM, and XCP-ng. Focus: Reducing licensing friction, open-source reliability, and enterprise-grade KVM orchestration.

Open Source HCI

Level 100: Proxmox VE

  • Debian Core: Managing a Linux-based hypervisor.
  • ZFS Storage: Local storage resilience without RAID cards.
  • LXC Containers: Native lightweight virtualization.

Architect’s Verdict: Proxmox is the bridge between the simplicity of a lab and the needs of a production rack.

Standardization

Level 200: Pure KVM Logic

  • QEMU/KVM: Understanding the kernel-level hypervisor.
  • Libvirt: Standardizing management across nodes.
  • Cloud-Init: Automated provisioning for Linux guests.

Architect’s Verdict: KVM is the silent engine under the world’s largest clouds. It is the ultimate vendor-neutral path.

SDDC Orchestration

Level 300: OpenStack & Beyond

  • OpenStack: Managing the complex, multi-tenant private cloud.
  • KubeVirt: Running VMs inside Kubernetes clusters.
  • Harvester: HCI built on top of Kubernetes and KVM.

Architect’s Verdict: When virtualization moves into the control plane of Kubernetes, the “Stack” becomes truly modern.