Since Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware, we’ve been seeing the same discussion in many companies: Licensing costs have skyrocketed, product and partner policies have become unpredictable—and the search for alternatives is in full swing. In more and more projects, one name keeps coming up: Proxmox VE. Open source, from Austria, technically mature with clustering, ZFS, and Ceph, and without license lock-in.
For traditional server workloads, migration is usually not a major issue. Things get interesting when Citrix Environments — because this immediately raises the question: How will I provision my workers in the future?
The problem: MCS is not supported on Proxmox
Citrix Machine Creation Services (MCS) requires a Host Connection to the Hypervisor. MCS communicates directly with the management API of vSphere, XenServer, Nutanix AHV, or SCVMM to clone VMs and manage disks. No such plugin exists for Proxmox—neither from Citrix nor from Proxmox. A look at the official Citrix Hypervisor Support Matrix (CTX131239) confirms this: Proxmox is not listed.
So anyone migrating from VMware to Proxmox will lose MCS as a deployment method. Period.
The solution: PVS is hypervisor-independent by design
Citrix Provisioning (PVS) works fundamentally differently. PVS requires No connection to the hypervisor API. The streaming concept is very simple:
- A virtual machine—the „shell“—boots over the network
- The PVS server streams the operating system block by block into this shell
- The underlying hypervisor is simply invisible to PVS
The requirements for the enclosure are straightforward: a network card with a working Windows driver and a standard display output. Proxmox provides both—both the Intel E1000 emulation (standard Windows driver) and the mature, signed VirtIO drivers work in PVS streaming mode.
Boot Question: PXE or BDM-ISO?
Proxmox generally supports network booting, both with SeaBIOS and with OVMF (UEFI). In practice, however, we recommend the Boot Device Manager (BDM) as an ISO — a boot procedure fully supported by Citrix, not a workaround:
- No DHCP/PXE conflict: Many networks already use other deployment systems (SCCM/MECM, WDS, Linux provisioning). The BDM ISO elegantly bypasses the entire PXE/TFTP chain.
- Deterministic: The boot information is contained in the ISO file, not in DHCP options, which can vary depending on the subnet and scope.
- Tried and true: Numerous enterprise environments have been running PVS exclusively with BDM-ISO for years—regardless of the hypervisor.
In Proxmox, the ISO is simply mounted as a CD-ROM drive on the target VMs. That's it.
Honesty is part of it: What „unsupported“ means
One thing we won't hide: Proxmox is not listed on the Citrix support matrix. That means not, ...that PVS doesn't work there—apparently, Citrix does not provide hypervisor-specific support for support cases. The core PVS functions (streaming, vDisk management, farm operation) are not affected by this because they are not aware of the hypervisor at all.
Every company must make this decision for itself. However, those who are in the process of moving away from VMware have learned to take a critical look at their reliance on vendor promises. And the trend is clear: Community demand for official Proxmox support for Citrix is growing noticeably.
And that's where PVS Forge comes in
If PVS becomes your provisioning method on Proxmox, the next question is: How do you operate your PVS farm efficiently? That's exactly why we built PVS Forge—and, like PVS itself, it's completely hypervisor-independent:
- Automated vDisk Imaging: One click—Forge takes care of the rest. Trigger it, walk away, and wait for the email. No need to babysit 100-GB imaging jobs.
- Secure Multi-Server Sync: vDisk versions are distributed consistently across all PVS servers—in the correct order, without stream interruptions on load-balanced targets.
- Software Inventory & Version Comparison: What has really changed between two image builds? Forge knows.
- Entirely on-premises: No U.S. cloud, no "phone-home," offline licensing. Developed in Germany.
PVS Forge communicates exclusively with the PVS server and the targets—using the same interfaces that the Citrix console uses. Whether vSphere, XenServer, or Proxmox is running underneath is irrelevant to Forge. Your Proxmox migration won't change your image management workflow at all.
Conclusion
| VMware/vSphere | Proxmox VE | |
|---|---|---|
| Citrix MCS | ✅ Supported | ❌ Not possible (no host connection) |
| Citrix PVS | ✅ Supported | ⚙️ Technically fully functional (BDM-ISO), hypervisor not on Citrix Matrix |
| PVS Forge | ✅ | ✅ Hypervisor-independent by design |
The move away from VMware is restoring PVS to what it has always been: the most robust and flexible provisioning method in the Citrix portfolio—and currently the only one available on Proxmox. Anyone taking this approach needs a tool that automates day-to-day PVS operations.
That's exactly what PVS Forge is for.
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