https://lawrence.video/

---

Thanks to Meter for sponsoring this video!
Go to https://lawrence.video/meter to book a demo now!

---

With Broadcom fundamentally changing the VMware licensing landscape, businesses are searching for a stable, open-source exit strategy. In this video, we move past the technical deep-dives to look at Proxmox and XCP-ng from a strictly business perspective.

Deep-Dive Technical Comparison Forum Post & Video: https://forums.lawrencesystems.com/t/proxmox-vs-xcp-ng-2026-comparison/26421

Vates Support & Pricing: https://vates.tech/en/pricing-and-support/

Proxmox Subscription Tiers: https://shop.proxmox.com/index.php?rp=/store/proxmox-ve-standard

Connect With Us
---------------------------------------------------  
+ Hire Us for a project: https://lawrencesystems.com/hire-us/
+ Toms' Twitter 🐦 https://twitter.com/TomLawrenceTech
+ Our Website https://www.lawrencesystems.com/
+ Our Forums https://forums.lawrencesystems.com/
+ Instagram https://www.instagram.com/lawrencesystems/
+ Facebook https://www.facebook.com/Lawrencesystems/
+ GitHub https://github.com/lawrencesystems/


Lawrence Systems Shirts and Swag
---------------------------------------------------
►👕 https://lawrence.video/swag/


AFFILIATES & REFERRAL LINKS
---------------------------------------------------
Amazon Affiliate Store
🛒 https://www.amazon.com/shop/lawrencesystemspcpickup

UniFi Affiliate Link
🛒 https://lawrence.video/unifi-affiliate

All Of Our Affiliates help us out and can get you discounts!
🛒 https://lawrencesystems.com/partners-we-love/

Gear we use on Kit 
🛒 https://kit.co/lawrencesystems

Use OfferCode LTSERVICES to get 10% off your order at
🛒 https://www.techsupplydirect.com?aff=2

Digital Ocean Offer Code
🛒 https://m.do.co/c/85de8d181725

HostiFi UniFi Cloud Hosting Service
🛒 https://hostifi.net/?via=lawrencesystems

Protect your privacy with a VPN from Private Internet Access
🛒 https://www.privateinternetaccess.com/pages/buy-vpn/LRNSYS

Patreon
💰 https://www.patreon.com/lawrencesystems

Timestamps:
00:00 - The VMware "Broadcom" Problem
01:26 Mitigating Risk With Open Source
01:48 Why Not Others Like OpenShift?
02:12 The Homelab Advantage 
02:50 The Veeam Factor: Validation for Open Source
03:21 TCO and The Power of Integration
04:46 Support & SLAs

Lawrence Systems

Following Broadcom's acquisition of VMware and the resulting pricing and licensing upheaval, businesses are evaluating open source hypervisor alternatives. Proxmox and XCP-ng are the two leading contenders. Proxmox, built on Debian with KVM, benefits from a large community talent pool and modular tooling but requires managing multiple components and lacks enterprise-grade SLA support. XCP-ng, a fork of Citrix XenServer maintained by Vates, offers a purpose-built minimal host OS, a unified management plane (Xen Orchestra), and formal SLA-backed support closer to VMware's model. The key differentiators are TCO, update management complexity, and support guarantees. Proprietary alternatives are dismissed as simply resetting the vendor lock-in clock, while OpenShift is noted as a different category of platform. The recommendation is to choose based on team skill set and formal support requirements.

The VMware Exit Strategy: Proxmox vs. XCP-ng in 2026