[pve-devel] fosdem feeback

[Gilou]

Le 05/02/2024 à 10:43, DERUMIER, Alexandre a écrit :
> Hi,
> 
> Here a summary of the weekend.
> 
> First, thanks to you guys to be there, it was great to finally meet you
> !

Hi,

I missed that email, shame on me!
Thanks a lot Alexandre for that feedback, this week-end was indeed crazy 
and exhausting, it was quite an amazing experience though!

I'm very proud of having been able to represent the community @ FOSDEM 
and spend some great time with users, devs, competitors, and the mood on 
the stand was quite nice with Alex{is,andre}, David and all the friends 
around. That fridge was a nice addition, of course ;)

> 
> users were pretty happy to see finally a proxmox stand at fosdem
> 
> - we have seen a lloootttt of people on the stand with questions.  (I
> have 10min break on the full weekend).

And we know how we used those breaks haha, coffee was too far away, and 
food was not easy to get, I'll just say that. ;)

>    We always had 2-3 users asking for questions all the days .(
> hopefully, we were 4 , but it was pretty intensive)
> - we had enough sticker for the 2 days
> - we didn't have enough t-shirt ^_^  , but we were the only stand give
> them for free ^_^
>    we were out of stock saturday afternoon,  and we only give them to
> proxmox users talking with us

T-shirts worked like crazy, however, it's hard to understand it's a 
Proxmox one from the front… Some have a tile that says Proxmox, but 
that's rather hard to notice. And yeah, the question about Proxmox VE vs 
Proxmox is a marketing "issue" to you probably, but it doesn't matter. I 
think talking / showing Proxmox works for VE as well as your other 
products ;)

And some suggested stickers with witty phrases, a bit like Nextcloud or 
Fortinet does…

We could have maybe funny/agressive stuff like:
- "Unattended server: Proxmox VE install planned in 7 days"
- Proxmox VE is open-source, won't cost you 2x the price next year
- Want a Web interface for your virtualization? How about it doesn't eat 
32 GB of RAM?

> 
> 
> Most asked question (I don't remember all):
> 
> - multi-cluster interface  (This is the running gag of the weekend,  Hi
> Stoiko ;)

> 
> - more cloud/user portal/more simple oriented alternative interface
> (only vm management for example, no display of nodes, with big icons)
>    A lot of admin are pretty happy with current interface,  but they
> said it can be too complex/too much feature display to give access to
> user/customer.

Self-service overall, a lot were very curious about SDN also…

>    Be able to restrict displayed feature (not only greying them out)
> could be great too.

Also, I think I noticed a bug for that, for replication, it seems that 
even without proper perms, you can go through the form to set it up, 
which fails once you finish it…

> 
> - As it was expected, a lot of people are looking to leave vmware
> (thanks Broadcom).
>    Asking question about features parity (maybe it could be great to
> have a paper about features/diff vs other hypervisors).
>    A lot of question about vm compatibility, and of course migration
> from vmware.
>    (Maybe a gui or a wizard tool could be fine. I known than
> Xenorchestra guys have done it, calling vmware api to directly
> export|import)
>    
> - snapshot/thin prov from san.  (mostly from guys from vmware as they
> need a shared san for HA , and they have vmfs layer )

Yup… That one is common… Maybe we need to document ZFS/ISCSI plugins or 
make it more obvious… Or have thin-lvm work over ISCSI…

> 
> - pbs: s3 storage remote sync (already on the roadmap)
> 
> - be able to launch multiple vzdump in parallel on 1 host (seem to have
> a lock currently)
> - be able to have a cluster wide lock for backup job.(to no have every
> node launching vzdump at the same time)

That's one I have as well, thanks for pointing it out. Talking to the 
devs, I'll try to get to the drawing board, starting by counting the 
vzdump process, enforcing a per-host (or maybe per-target) limit set at 
1 by default, getting inspiration from the live migrate limit, as 
suggested by one of the devs over the weekend. Will do a specific thread 
for it.

> 
> - a guy from datacore want to contact somebody from proxmox for storage
> api integration and other partneship
>    (I give his card to stoikov)

Yeah, we promised him we would get him in contact, but mostly he 
mentioned emailing office@ and not getting an answer ;)

He had also some proposals for VSAN-like features, and object storage 
solutions in containers as well.

> 
> - a guy from Thales (big French company) was looking for a sale contact
> at Proxmox (He don't have give me his card, and I don't have seen him
> later)
> 
> - a lots of guys ask: "What is proxmox VE ?". So I think they are
> possible communication/marketing improvement ^_^

Yeah, as I mentioned earlier, that's a marketing "issue", though it 
probably doesn't matter. I think it's fine to advertise for Proxmox as a 
company, like vSphere is usually just noticed as "VMWare", Proxmox VE 
might be known as Proxmox (but better :P). And it may draw attention to 
the others products (well, PBS is easy, MG is a bit more focused).

> 
> - more generic questions about support, training, licenses..

A few indeed like Datacore, Thales, but also others seem to seek 
partnership in an "old school" way, I'm not sure there's a reason to go 
for it, but some would love to be labelled as partners in the current 
VMWare situation… No kidding..

Overall, I'd do it again, it was nice, but that is not a walk in the 
park, be advised. People are really willing to engage, and discuss, and 
were somehow surprised we weren't actually Proxmox employees ;)

Cheers,

Gilou