[bodeadly]

Dread.

I run all of my Windows Server / 10 / 11 client VMs on ESXi for testing my Java software product.

I'm getting the impression that proxmox is the only real alternative for Windows guests?

I do need to get packet captures from the host so maybe Linux is better than something like Hyper-V?

[Saris]

Proxmox is a nice UI and extra utilities on top of KVM for VMs, KVM can be installed on any Linux system.

I'd install Proxmox in a VM and give it a try if you want to see how it goes.

[stunpix]

Just for note: Proxmox also can run containers (not Docker) beside VMs.

[CoolCold]

I tend to use those VE, virtual environment to make distinguish between containers, VMs and lightweight full OS based containers, since the days of using OpenVZ - may be i'll like that naming too.

[patmorgan23]

Xcp-ng is also an option (it's based on Zen)

[candiddevmike]

You can run QEMU/KVM using docker/podman. I made a simple container here for it that lets you use cloud-init: https://github.com/candiddev/shared/tree/main/containers/qem...