Use Cases

flex.plane serves organizations that have outgrown the Proxmox UI but do not want the complexity of OpenStack or the cost of VMware. Here is who benefits most and what problems it solves.

Who it's for

Cloud Service Providers (CSPs)

You run infrastructure for customers. You need multi-tenancy with strong isolation, resource quotas, and per-tenant access control. flex.plane's Virtual Datacenters (VDCs) give you exactly that: logical isolation with separate networking, quotas, and user management per tenant. Your customers get a self-service portal to manage their own VMs and networks without ever touching the Proxmox UI.

Enterprise IT teams

You are looking to replace VMware (or avoid getting locked in further). You already run Proxmox or are evaluating it. flex.plane gives you the management layer that Proxmox's built-in UI lacks for multi-cluster, multi-team environments, without the complexity of OpenStack. Your development teams get self-service access to provision VMs and Kubernetes clusters. Your platform team keeps control through profiles, quotas, and RBAC.

Managed Service Providers (MSPs)

You manage infrastructure for multiple clients. You need a clean way to carve up shared hardware into isolated environments, each with its own resource limits and user access. VDCs, role-based access control, and the GraphQL API make this straightforward to automate.

Common use cases

Multi-cluster Proxmox management

You have Proxmox clusters in multiple locations. Maybe Frankfurt and Helsinki. Maybe three racks in the same datacenter. flex.plane gives you a single control plane across all of them. Every cluster becomes a "zone" in flex.plane, and you manage VMs, networks, and storage across zones from one portal and one API.

Managed Kubernetes on Proxmox

Run production Kubernetes clusters on your own Proxmox hardware. flex.plane uses Cluster API (CAPI) to provision and manage Kubernetes clusters with hosted control planes. Create a cluster from the portal, scale node pools up and down, and let flex.plane handle the lifecycle. No cloud provider required.

Developer self-service in enterprise

Your developers need VMs and clusters for development, testing, and staging. Instead of filing tickets with the infrastructure team, they log into the flex.plane portal, pick a compute profile, and spin up what they need. Admins define the available profiles, set quotas per team via VDCs, and maintain control without being a bottleneck.

Private cloud for hosting providers

You offer dedicated or shared infrastructure to customers. flex.plane lets you build a private cloud product on Proxmox: each customer gets their own VDC with isolated networks, resource quotas, and a portal they can log into. You manage the underlying hardware; they manage their workloads.

Hybrid and multi-site infrastructure

Your infrastructure spans on-prem and colocation facilities. flex.plane's WireGuard mesh connects nodes across locations securely, and the orchestrator aggregates resources from all sites. Move VMs between zones, balance workloads across locations, and maintain a unified view of your entire fleet.

Standardized VM provisioning

You want consistent, repeatable VM creation across your organization. Compute profiles and storage profiles ensure every VM follows your sizing standards. Image catalogs keep approved OS images in one place. Cloud-init templates handle initial configuration. No more snowflake VMs.

Who it's NOT for

flex.plane is opinionated about its scope. Here is where it is not the right tool:

• Public cloud replacement. flex.plane manages on-prem and hybrid infrastructure. If you want pure public cloud, use AWS, GCP, or Azure directly.
• Bare-metal provisioning. flex.plane manages virtual machines on Proxmox, not bare-metal server provisioning. Look at MAAS or Tinkerbell for that.
• Application-level PaaS. flex.plane gives you infrastructure — VMs, networks, Kubernetes clusters. It does not deploy your application code, manage CI/CD pipelines, or give you a "git push to deploy" experience. If that is what you need, look at lucity.cloud — it runs beautifully on top of flex.plane.