Which is better for your home lab?

Whether you're a distro hopper or someone who enjoys self-hosting, a home lab is a useful addition to your computer setup. Depending on your specific needs, you can opt for anything from a tiny SBC to an enterprise-class server setup for the hardware. But when it comes to software, Proxmox remains the operating system of choice for a significant portion of home lab enthusiasts.

However, there are several other virtualization platforms worth considering, and XCP-ng is particularly popular with users who have migrated from ESXi. In this post, we will compare the Xen-based XCP-ng with the KVM-based Proxmox to see which performs best.

Easy installation and user interface

Winner: Proxmox and its simple interface

As far as the setup process goes, both Proxmox and XCP-ng have a straightforward process, with the former being a bit easier to install. Because the Proxmox installation wizard groups several settings under each tab, it feels a little quicker to configure everything than going through the numerous menus you have to navigate when setting up XCP-ng.

However, without both platforms' web-based interfaces, I would have called it a draw. Starting with version 8.3 of XCP-ng, you can access a web interface called XO Lite after entering your server's IP address into the web browser. Unfortunately, the new user interface is still in its infancy and there isn't much you can do with it at the moment. Therefore, you need to provision another VM to run XOA, which makes the process a bit tricky. Compare this to its competitor's simple but highly intuitive interface and it becomes clear why Proxmox wins this round.

Stability and errors (or rather the lack thereof)

Winner: XCP-ng, easy

Troubleshooting is one of the most important aspects of a home lab, although no one wants an operating system that is prone to crashes. Although I have had mostly positive experiences with Proxmox and XCP-ng, there are also some problems with the former. One of the most common errors I've experienced is the UI randomly freezing for a few seconds after running the Proxmox PVE for a few hours.

XCP-ng, and by extension Xen Orchestra, never experienced these strange freezes, even after running it for several hours. I also had issues setting up Proxmox when using my RTX 3080 Ti as the primary display device, while the same GPU worked without issues in XCP-ng.

ZFS support and VDI storage

Winner: Proxmox

As a long-time TrueNAS Core/Scale user, ZFS remains my file system of choice when setting up multiple drives in RAID configurations. Fortunately, Proxmox offers full ZFS support out of the box and it is possible to monitor all of your ZFS-based RAID files via the web interface. Meanwhile, XCP-ng requires the ZFS package to be installed, and while that isn't a problem in itself, the lack of monitoring features is definitely an issue.

In addition, XCP-ng limits the file size of the VDI to 2TB, while Proxmox has no such limitation. For the average hobbyist, that's more than enough. But once you start working on advanced projects that drag on like there's no tomorrow, you may find yourself reaching your limits in no time.

Containerization

Winner: Proxmox, and it's not even close to this big!

VMs may have their own advantages, but containers are just as useful on a home server. Proxmox has built-in LXC containerization, and while it's not enough to replace their Docker counterparts, LXC containers are great for numerous projects when you combine them with the TurnKey templates you have in the web UI can download.

In contrast, XCP-ng only supports VMs. Well, technically this allows you to create a Kubernetes server via an additional plugin, but that's not enough to ensure the platform's victory over Proxmox's solid LXC container technology.

Clustering

Winner: XCP-ng and its easy-to-setup clusters

Although you can create high availability setups with both Proxmox and XCP-ng, I have always opted for the latter when it comes to clustering. Because it is a handcrafted tool for production environments, configuring an HA cluster in XCP-ng is far easier than in Proxmox. All you need to do is connect XOA to the hosts, add shared storage, and enable HA in the UI. Meanwhile, Proxmox has a lengthy process where you have to delete the guests on secondary nodes before you can add them to a cluster, which is quite tedious if all your hosts are running different VMs and containers.

Backup

Winner: Proxmox (by a narrow margin)

If you have the free versions of XCP-ng and Fortunately, you can compile XOA with some terminal commands to bypass the paid requirement. You can even save your XOA configuration using this method!

However, Veeam recently integrated backup support for Proxmox after abandoning VMware. If you've never heard of it, it's a game changer in backup creation. Sure, the fact that PVE Host Backup isn't available yet is a real eye-opener. But in my opinion, the backup process in Proxmox is better than XCP-ng because of its simplicity.

Proxmox vs. XCP-ng: Which one should you choose?

Proxmox for home labs; XCP-ng for professional production environments

You may have noticed by now that I didn't mention the performance category. That's because in all of my testing, I found the performance of the two platforms to be identical. For average home lab projects, both Proxmox and XCP-ng were equally responsive, even after deploying multiple VMs on each platform.

Still, Proxmox gets my vote as the best operating system for home lab users. It's fairly easy to set up, supports LXC containers, and offers pretty much all the features you'd want from a home lab in its easy-to-access interface.

But that doesn't mean that XCP-ng is a bad virtualization platform. In fact, I would prefer it to Proxmox if you want to create a production environment aimed at business and other professional workloads. Although some may disagree with me, Xen remains a perfectly good hypervisor in 2024, and you will have no problems using XCP-ng as a home lab environment.