Proxmox comparison

Proxmox VE is the right comparison for Coppice’s operator surface: one browser UI for compute, storage, networking, snapshots, consoles, tasks, auth, and cluster state. Coppice is not a general-purpose hypervisor manager, but the admin dashboard should feel familiar to a Proxmox operator when the question is “what is running, what changed, can I open a console, can I snapshot/fork it, and what does the host think is healthy?” The canonical descriptive reference for what Proxmox actually does — header chrome, resource tree, datacenter / node / guest tabs, storage and SDN, the bottom task panel — lives at /appendix/proxmox-admin-spec; this page is the row-by-row Coppice parity map keyed against it.

What Proxmox exposes

The current Proxmox VE admin guide describes a browser-based management interface with a top header, resource tree, content panels, built-in HTML5 console, search, task history, syslogs, storage, backup, replication, permissions, HA, and firewall panels. The storage chapter emphasizes pluggable local/shared storage, snapshots, thin provisioning, and shared-storage migration. The firewall chapter describes datacenter/host/VM-level policy with IPv4 and IPv6 support.

• Proxmox VE Administration Guide
• Proxmox VE Storage
• Proxmox VE Firewall
• Proxmox VE Live Snapshots

Main admin UI inventory

This is the full Proxmox-style UI surface Coppice should either match, intentionally omit, or document as a different primitive. The target is operator parity for Coppice’s scope, not a literal clone of every Linux cluster feature.

What changed in the UI in this pass

The admin dashboard now has a Proxmox-shaped workbench. It polls the same gateway APIs as the rest of the dashboard, then renders:

• A fullscreen admin app shell instead of the public-site nav/footer.
• Datacenter summary for the single node.
• Topbar actions for search, create-machine, tasks, firewall, and the Proxmox parity map.
• Structured admin routing via /admin/#/guest/<id>/console so selected resource tabs survive refresh, back/forward, and direct links without breaking the static Astro deployment.
• Node inventory for running sandboxes/VMs, with search filtering.
• Guest rows grouped under the node, with template/state/address data and an in-admin detail/action panel.
• Selected guest summary operations strip for console, metrics, snapshots, firewall, task history, pause/resume, snapshot/fork, preview URL, Remote-SSH, and kill.
• Guest tabs for Summary, Console, Monitor, Hardware, Options, Backup, Snapshots, Firewall, Permissions, Tasks, and Metrics.
• Selected-guest Monitor tab with presets and arbitrary operator command execution through the gateway exec API.
• Proxmox-shaped create-machine wizard with template, lifecycle, network, hardware, and review sections.
• Guest Hardware and Options tabs now present table/form affordances for the fields operators expect; jail resource limits are editable and unsafe bhyve/NIC/display mutations remain visibly disabled.
• Embedded admin console iframes for shell/VNC/RDP/browser-style views, with an in-page full-console overlay instead of a new browser window. Inventory polling and guest-to-guest navigation preserve mounted console DOM nodes so VNC/RDP sessions do not reload every refresh tick or when switching away and back.
• A first-class Metrics resource with gateway counter graphs, node workload history, lifecycle mix, webhook delivery mix, and current per-guest usage.
• Per-guest Metrics tabs with CPU, memory, disk, uptime, and log-line sparklines from Prometheus labels.
• Storage rows for volumes, durable snapshots, backend inventory, and live node disk/dataset/filesystem/partition inventory.
• Storage workbench tables for volumes/live mounts and a snapshot browser with selected restore-point detail.
• Backup workbench tables for schedules plus a restore wizard that forks a new sandbox from a selected snapshot.
• Node system workbench for gateway service counters, VNET wedge bundles, stuck-process probe output, rc.d service inventory, interface/bridge/route/pf state, node log/source inventory, update/repository/time/DNS/host/cert probes, bhyve pool status, and recent API audit.
• Pool workbench using Prometheus-labeled warm-pool ready/in-use/target rows and reconciliation outcomes.
• Network/firewall workbench for bridge/NAT policy, per-guest addresses, datacenter/guest rule tables, alias/IP-set inventory, air-gap state, VNET diagnostics, and denied/error audit decisions.
• Permissions workbench for auth summary, privilege matrix, subject/token/role inventory, ACL assignment rows, audit outcome graph, denied/error permission decisions, and recent access log.
• Cluster/HA workbench for single-node status, lifecycle feed, node/overlay link rows, replication job shape, and named overlay/replication/fencing/ migration gaps.
• Notifications/certificates workbench for event sources, webhook delivery mix, delivery table, target/matcher inventory, retry plan, and TLS lifecycle inventory.
• A collapsible bottom tool window for tasks, audit, and aggregate metrics.
• A task explorer that reads gateway task records, follows /tasks/events for live updates, then combines lifecycle and audit events into one selectable history view with filters, status/progress, raw detail, and cancel-request controls for non-terminal gateway tasks.
• The old page sections are no longer below the workbench; receipts, capability map, metrics, snapshots, gateway health, and backlog are all resource-tree destinations inside the admin interface.
• The page is now an Astro route plus a hydrated React admin island, so the stateful surface is componentized instead of rebuilt through template-string DOM mutation.

That closes the biggest UX gap without pretending Coppice is a full cluster hypervisor manager. The next Proxmox-shaped closures are:

1. Bhyve reconfigure APIs for editable guest CPU/RAM/disk hotplug plus NIC/display option editors.
2. Real cancellation for in-flight jobs plus child stdout/stderr splicing into the task event stream.
3. Storage manager backends for retention policies, archive/export targets, destructive restore-over-source, and arbitrary host storage pool provisioning.
4. Host operations editors for package/repository mutation, bridge/VLAN/pf edits, certificate lifecycle, SMART/repair workflows, and installed template versions. Read-only service, syslog, repository/update, DNS/time, certificate, network, and storage probes are already wired into /admin/#/node/honor/*.
5. Permissions backend CRUD for users, groups, roles, scoped API tokens, pools, and optional external realms/TFA.
6. Cluster overlay receipt once a second host is available.
7. Notification target CRUD, retry inspector, email/chat targets, and certificate inventory/renewal jobs.
8. Firewall rule editor for aliases, IP sets, reusable security groups, and explicit datacenter/node/guest policy composition.

Page-by-page audit (2026-04-27)

This is the granular pass keyed against actual screenshots of pve-manager (under /proxmox/) and the live Coppice /admin route (under /coppice-admin/). Each row names the Proxmox page, the corresponding Coppice route, a verdict, and the specific deltas to ship next.

Proxmox page	Coppice route	screenshots and granular gaps
Datacenter Summary	closed	Proxmox shows multi-node aggregate Status / Guests / Resources tiles plus a CPU + memory + storage chart strip; Coppice shows the equivalent single-node tiles (live guests, templates, sampled CPU/RAM/disk, schedules, audit/lifecycle counters) and now renders sparklines for gateway counters. Proxmox subscription/repository/health row is N/A here — Coppice is self-hosted, no subscription gate.
Datacenter Storage	partial	Proxmox lists datacenter-scoped storages with type + content tags (Disk image / ISO / VZDump / Container / Snippets) plus an Add: Directory/LVM/ZFS/NFS/CIFS/Ceph/PBS dialog; Coppice exposes 5 backend rows but no Add-storage form — ship a storage backend wizard for at minimum extra ZFS datasets and an ISO library directory. Proxmox storage Summary tab shows usage chart (week/month) per backend; Coppice shows current usage numerals only — chart per-backend usage history off the existing Prometheus counter. Proxmox content tab supports per-image actions (Restore, Show Configuration, Remove, Edit Notes); Coppice snapshot detail shows fork/restore but not in-place destructive restore — that one is intentionally backend-gated.
Datacenter Firewall	partial	Proxmox firewall has Rules, Options, Aliases, IPSet, Security Group, Log subsections at three scopes (datacenter/node/guest); Coppice shows datacenter rule table, alias/IP-set inventory, denied/error audit, and per-guest rule rows but no rule create/edit form — ship a rule editor that writes through the per-sandbox coppice/sandbox-<short> pf anchor. Proxmox supports reusable Security Groups composable across guests; Coppice has no group abstraction — model a sharable rule template and reference from sandbox metadata. Proxmox firewall Log tab streams pf-equivalent matches per rule; Coppice surfaces denied/error audit decisions from the gateway but not the underlying pf log — pipe pflog0 tagged-by-anchor into the audit stream.
Datacenter Backup	partial	Proxmox backup-job edit dialog has 4 tabs (General / Retention / Note Template / Advanced) with cron schedule, target storage, mode (snapshot/suspend/stop), notification policy, retention (keep-last/hourly/daily/weekly/monthly/yearly), Zstandard, mailto, prune; Coppice shows schedule list and a restore wizard but no edit dialog — ship a job editor with the 6 retention buckets and a cron+target form. Proxmox supports PBS as a target with deduplicated incremental backups; Coppice’s only target is a local ZFS snapshot — flag PBS-style remote target as a backend gap. Proxmox shows backup-job last-run status with green/yellow/red plus tail-of-log; Coppice snapshot rows show creation time but no per-job result — wire tasks/events backup outcomes into the schedule row.
Node Summary	partial	Proxmox node summary shows host CPU usage, IO delay, load average, RAM, KSM, swap, root-fs, kernel/PVE/CPU/manager versions, repo status banner, plus 24-hour CPU + Server-Load graphs; Coppice shows gateway uptime/created/reaped/active sparklines but no host-level CPU/load/RAM/IO panel — surface top -bn1 + vmstat + swapinfo output and chart node CPU + load. Proxmox shows kernel + manager versions plus repo update banner; Coppice has version info hidden in the System tab — pull uname -a, freebsd-version -kru, and pkg version -vIL= into the summary header. Proxmox has Reboot/Shutdown/Bulk Actions/Shell buttons in the topbar; Coppice has none at the node scope — ship a graceful reboot/shutdown action gated by an explicit confirmation modal.
Node System / Updates / Repos / Time / DNS	partial	Proxmox sidebar splits into Shell, System (services / network / DNS / hosts / time), Updates, Repositories, Firewall, Disks, Ceph, Replication, Task History, Subscription, plus a per-tab editor; Coppice now has deep-linkable read-only tabs for /admin/#/node/honor/services, /network, /updates, /repositories, /time, /dns, /hosts, /syslog, and /certificates. Proxmox Updates tab runs apt update / apt-get dist-upgrade with a live log pane; Coppice has no update action — ship pkg update + freebsd-update fetch install wrapper that streams stdout into the task event channel. Proxmox Time and DNS tabs are editable forms; Coppice shows the host’s resolv.conf upstream as text but no editor — wire local_unbound forward-zone and ntpd/sntp targets through a config-write task. Proxmox Certificates tab manages ACME + custom uploads; Coppice exposes a TLS lifecycle view in /admin/#/notifications but no upload/renew action — ship ACME automation tied to the existing notifications panel.
Node Disks / ZFS / LVM	partial	Proxmox Disks tab lists physical devices with model/serial/size/health/SMART, plus subtabs for LVM/LVM-Thin/Directory/ZFS pool/Ceph OSD; Coppice shows ZFS dataset rows but no underlying disk inventory — pipe geom disk list + smartctl -a + zpool status into the Disks tab. Proxmox ZFS panel exposes pool create wizard with stripe/mirror/raidz1-3/dRAID and ashift; Coppice has no pool create — flag as backend gap; zpool create wrapper with confirmation modal. Proxmox quota and usage editor lets you adjust per-dataset reservation; Coppice has it for the writable layer per-sandbox but not for the dataset/pool — extend the existing limits editor to dataset granularity.
Node Task History	closed	Proxmox bottom panel shows Tasks + Cluster log with start/end/node/user/description/status columns; Coppice has the same shape with All/Task/Lifecycle/Audit/Errors filters, live SSE updates, per-row detail (type/state/target/time/progress/cancel), and a collapsible bottom-tools drawer. Proxmox task detail shows raw stdout/stderr; Coppice task detail shows progress + raw payload but not subprocess stdout — flagged as known hardening item, child-process splicing into /tasks/events.
VM Summary	partial	Proxmox VM Summary shows status/HA-state/node/CPU-usage/memory-usage/bootdisk-size/IPs plus 5min/hour/day/week/year RRD CPU + Memory + Network + Disk-IO graphs; Coppice shows current-tick CPU/MEM/disk numerals and an editable Notes-equivalent metadata block — ship per-guest sparkline graphs at the same 5 aggregation levels off the existing Prometheus labels. Proxmox has free-form Notes (Markdown) per guest; Coppice has metadata key/value rows but no Markdown notes — add a Notes box backed by sandbox metadata. Proxmox Summary header has Start / Shutdown / Stop / Migrate / Console / More dropdown; Coppice has Pause / Resume / Snapshot / Snapshot+Fork / Preview / SSH / Kill — Migrate is N/A on a single host, but graceful Shutdown vs Kill is missing.
VM Console	closed	Proxmox offers noVNC + SPICE + xterm.js consoles via a Console dropdown; Coppice’s Console tab tabs through Shell, Files, VNC, RDP and a per-tab open-full overlay — strictly broader than Proxmox. Proxmox console toolbar has Send-Key (Ctrl-Alt-Del, Tab, etc.); Coppice’s xterm-style Shell does not expose chord buttons — add a Send-Key dropdown for VNC sessions.
VM Hardware	partial	Proxmox Hardware lists 11 device kinds (Memory, Processors, BIOS, Display, Machine, SCSI Controller, CD/DVD, Hard Disk, Network Device, Cloud-Init, Audio) with Add / Remove / Edit / Move-disk / Resize-disk / Disk-action buttons; Coppice shows 5 rows (CPU, memory, disk, NIC, display) and only CPU/memory/disk are editable — ship NIC + Display editors and add BIOS + Machine + CD-Drive read-only rows so the hardware table mirrors Proxmox shape. Proxmox supports hot-plug for vCPU/RAM/disk/NIC on supported guests; Coppice jail limits are live but bhyve hot-plug is not — flagged as backend gap pending bhyve reconfigure APIs. Proxmox Cloud-Init row is editable (user/password/ssh-keys/network); Coppice has template startup scripts but no cloud-init row — surface them as a hardware row for symmetry.
VM Options	partial	Proxmox Options has 18+ rows (Name, Start at boot, Boot Order, OS Type, Use tablet for pointer, Hotplug, ACPI, KVM, Freeze CPU at startup, Use local time, RTC start date, SMBIOS settings, QEMU Agent, Protection, Spice Enhancements, VM State storage, Hookscript, Tags); Coppice shows 4 (timeout action, auto-resume, display mode, boot profile) — ship at minimum Name/Tags/Start-at-boot/QEMU-Agent equivalents (jail boot order, hostname override, agent presence flag). Proxmox Options has a Hookscript field that runs on lifecycle events; Coppice has lifecycle webhooks but not per-guest scripts — wire a per-sandbox hook script reference.
VM Snapshots	closed	Proxmox snapshots include optional VM state (memory) when storage supports it; Coppice does ZFS snapshots without memory state but offers a snapshot-fork action that Proxmox lacks. Different scope, both reasonable for their backends. Proxmox shows snapshot tree with rollback / remove / edit-description per row; Coppice shows the flat list with restore-via-fork — add an edit-description action.
VM Backup	partial	Proxmox per-VM Backup tab lists existing dumps and exposes Backup Now / Restore / Show Configuration / File Restore (single-file extraction without rolling back); Coppice exposes the schedule + restore-fork but not file-restore — the file-restore feature is high value for “I deleted a single file” workflows. Proxmox supports per-job retention overriding storage default; Coppice has no per-guest retention override — extend backup-job edit form to inherit/override.
VM Firewall	partial	Proxmox per-VM Firewall has Rules / Aliases / IPSet / Options / Log subtabs; Coppice shows the rule table and egress allow/deny + an air-gap toggle but no rule-add form — wire a per-sandbox rule editor against the existing coppice/sandbox-<short> anchor. Proxmox Options panel toggles enable/dhcp/macfilter/ipfilter/log-level-in/log-level-out/policy-in/policy-out per NIC; Coppice’s air-gap is binary — split into the same per-direction policy + log-level matrix.
VM Permissions	partial	Proxmox per-VM Permissions exposes Add User-Permission / Add Group-Permission / Add API-Token Permission with role pickers (PVEVMUser, PVEVMAdmin, etc.); Coppice shows the audit trail per guest but no add-permission form — ship a per-resource ACL writer that uses the existing scope language. Proxmox propagation flag controls whether ACLs descend; Coppice has datacenter/guest scope but no explicit propagate toggle — add it.
Create VM Wizard	partial	Proxmox wizard has 8 steps (General / OS / System / Disks / CPU / Memory / Network / Confirm) with backward navigation and per-step validation; Coppice has 4 (Template / Lifecycle / Network / Hardware) with template-backed defaults — extend with explicit OS / System / Disks tabs even if mostly read-only for jail templates. Proxmox OS step picks ISO + guest-OS-type (Linux 6.x / Windows 11 / Solaris / etc.) which drives downstream defaults; Coppice picks template directly — surface guest-OS-family as a metadata column on the template list. Proxmox Confirm step shows the final qm create command and a Start-after-create toggle; Coppice’s review step has the toggle but not the command preview — show the equivalent POST /sandboxes body.
SDN Zones / VNets / Subnets / Controllers	partial	Proxmox SDN supports 5 zone types (Simple, VLAN, QinQ, VXLAN, EVPN) plus Controllers, Fabrics (OpenFabric/OSPF), IPAM, VNet Firewall; Coppice shows the single coppicenet0 VNET bridge + coppbhyve0 + jail-NAT anchor — flag VLAN/QinQ/VXLAN/EVPN as cluster-only and document explicitly that single-host scope keeps the one bridge. Proxmox VNet panel adds/deletes per-tenant VNets with a CIDR + zone binding; Coppice’s IpAllocator is a single 10.78.0.0/24 pool — multi-tenant network namespacing is open. Proxmox IPAM tab shows reserved/in-use addresses; Coppice shows live per-guest 10.78.0.<M> assignments but no allocator history — surface free/in-use map plus reservation log.
Permissions: Users / Groups / Roles / Pools / Realms / 2FA	open	Proxmox Permissions tree splits into Users / API Tokens / Two Factor / Groups / Pools / Roles / Realms (PAM / PVE / LDAP / AD / OpenID); Coppice shows the access-control surface, role matrix, audit outcomes, and recent decisions but no user/group/role/realm CRUD — ship a self-hosted user table and role editor first, then layer realms. Proxmox 2FA supports TOTP / WebAuthn / Recovery Keys; Coppice has API keys + CLI login only — TOTP is the highest-value next 2FA factor. Proxmox Pools group VMs/storage for permission scoping; Coppice has no pool abstraction — model as a labelled subject with sandbox membership.
My Settings	na	Proxmox My Settings is a per-user UI prefs dialog (dashboard storages, language, theme, console default, browser-cookies); Coppice has no per-user identity in single-node scope — keep N/A until Permissions ships realms. The admin shell already exposes a theme picker in the topbar, which covers the most-used My-Settings field.

Verdict tally: 4 closed, 14 partial, 1 open, 1 na. The partials are concentrated on host operations (node tabs, disks, updates), per-VM options/permissions/firewall depth, and the create-VM wizard step count. The single open row is the user/group/role/realm CRUD under Permissions; everything else is an edit-form gap on top of an already shipped read view.