Chapter 1

Welcome to Book 5

Why virtualize and where Proxmox vs VMware fits.

In this book

  • Understand why organizations virtualize servers instead of running one OS per physical box
  • Compare Type 1 and Type 2 hypervisors and when each fits
  • Work with Proxmox VE and VMware ESXi at a practical level
  • Design VM networking, storage, backups, and snapshots
  • Decide when containers beat VMs — and when they do not
  • Deploy a multi-VM lab for a real Canadian small business

How to use this textbook

This is a free, self-paced digital textbook from Swift Host. Each chapter builds on the last. You can read on any device; exercises use pencil, paper, and optional lab access.

Tip

Hypervisor concepts apply whether you run Proxmox on a spare server, ESXi in a datacenter, or a cloud VPS. Focus on the ideas first — the UI labels differ, but the architecture repeats.

Meet your lab company

Throughout this book we use a fictional Canadian business:

Workshop Co.

Domain
workshopco.ca
Business
Weekend woodworking classes in Edmonton, Alberta
Website
Marketing site + online booking at www.workshopco.ca
Email
Google Workspace at @workshopco.ca
Infrastructure goal
Consolidate three aging physical servers onto one Proxmox host

Workshop Co. currently runs separate boxes for their website, internal booking database, and file storage. By the capstone you will design a virtualized replacement on a single hypervisor cluster.

What you need

  • Basic Linux familiarity (SSH, package install, disk names)
  • Optional: A machine with 16 GB+ RAM for a Proxmox lab — not required to learn the concepts
  • A notebook for exercises and architecture sketches

Try it yourself — Before Chapter 2

Imagine Workshop Co.'s three physical servers:

  1. Web server (Apache + PHP booking app)
  2. PostgreSQL database server
  3. Nextcloud file share for instructor materials

List three problems with keeping three separate physical machines in a small Edmonton workshop basement.

Discussion notes
  • Power, cooling, and noise from three always-on boxes
  • Each server uses only a fraction of its CPU/RAM most of the week
  • Backups, patching, and hardware failure recovery triple the admin work
  • No easy way to spin up a staging copy without buying another machine

Key terms introduced

Hypervisor
Software that runs multiple virtual machines on one physical host.
VM (virtual machine)
A complete guest operating system with virtual CPU, RAM, disk, and network.
Host
The physical machine running the hypervisor.