this post was submitted on 16 Aug 2025
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I find VMs to be unbearably sloe compared to a container. They just feel so heavy. I get the extra security layer, is that really why people are doing it or is there some other reason?
Being able to choose the OS and kernel is also important. I would not want my hypervisor machine to load GPU kernel modules, especially not on an older LTS kernel (which often don't support the latest hardware). Passing the GPU to a VM ensures stability of the host machine, with the flexibility to choose whatever kernel I need for specific hardware. This alongside running entirely different OSes (like *BSD, Windows :(, etc) is pretty useful for some services.
Portability, isolation, the ability to run pretty much anything inside. They do consume more resources, but if they're that much slower then there's probably something wrong in your setup.
Extra security and full isolation with its own kernel, so you can load kernel modules and such.
Also can run Windows in a VM when needed, or MacOS.
VMs are basically just as fast as containers, and the RAM overhead from a lightweight Linux VM is very small.
VMs are not just as fast as containers.
I didn't say that, I said almost! Generally disk IO is where VMs fall short on performance vs a container, but it's usually a pretty small difference.
The easy ui is good for those who aren't living in the terminal all the time.
I used proxmox for nearly 8 years before switching to only containers. It was fine.
Not everything runs in a container.