A practical comparison of running Docker inside LXC containers versus VMs on Proxmox 9.1, covering key trade-offs including kernel isolation, system stability, live migration, network storage (NFS/SMB), GPU passthrough, and resource efficiency. LXC containers use significantly less RAM (158MB vs 600MB for the same workload) and scale dynamically, but share the Proxmox kernel, meaning a kernel panic can crash the entire host. VMs offer stronger isolation and easier NFS/SMB mounts but consume more resources. The post also covers ZFS record size tuning to avoid write amplification with high-IO applications. Recommendations: use VMs for stability, live migration, and NAS-dependent stacks; use LXC for resource-constrained home labs running lightweight, self-contained apps like reverse proxies.
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