Proxmox VE Administration Guide 2 / 397
1.1 Central Management
While many people start with a single node, Proxmox VE can scale out to a large set of clustered nodes.
The cluster stack is fully integrated and ships with the default installation.
Unique Multi-Master Design
The integrated web-based management interface gives you a clean overview of all your KVM guests
and Linux containers and even of your whole cluster. You can easily manage your VMs and con-
tainers, storage or cluster from the GUI. There is no need to install a separate, complex, and pricey
management server.
Proxmox Cluster File System (pmxcfs)
Proxmox VE uses the unique Proxmox Cluster file system (pmxcfs), a database-driven file system for
storing configuration files. This enables you to store the configuration of thousands of virtual machines.
By using corosync, these files are replicated in real time on all cluster nodes. The file system stores
all data inside a persistent database on disk, nonetheless, a copy of the data resides in RAM which
provides a maximum storage size of 30MB - more than enough for thousands of VMs.
Proxmox VE is the only virtualization platform using this unique cluster file system.
Web-based Management Interface
Proxmox VE is simple to use. Management tasks can be done via the included web based manage-
ment interface - there is no need to install a separate management tool or any additional management
node with huge databases. The multi-master tool allows you to manage your whole cluster from any
node of your cluster. The central web-based management - based on the JavaScript Framework (Ex-
tJS) - empowers you to control all functionalities from the GUI and overview history and syslogs of each
single node. This includes running backup or restore jobs, live-migration or HA triggered activities.
Command Line
For advanced users who are used to the comfort of the Unix shell or Windows Powershell, Proxmox
VE provides a command line interface to manage all the components of your virtual environment. This
command line interface has intelligent tab completion and full documentation in the form of UNIX man
pages.
REST API
Proxmox VE uses a RESTful API. We choose JSON as primary data format, and the whole API is for-
mally defined using JSON Schema. This enables fast and easy integration for third party management
tools like custom hosting environments.
Role-based Administration
You can define granular access for all objects (like VMs, storages, nodes, etc.) by using the role based
user- and permission management. This allows you to define privileges and helps you to control
access to objects. This concept is also known as access control lists: Each permission specifies a
subject (a user or group) and a role (set of privileges) on a specific path.
Authentication Realms
Proxmox VE supports multiple authentication sources like Microsoft Active Directory, LDAP, Linux PAM
standard authentication or the built-in Proxmox VE authentication server.