After tinkering with Proxmox for a few years, I’ve worked on all sorts of cool projects, ranging from semi-realistic use cases to completely insane experiments. However, few things are as exciting as running a full-fledged Windows 11 virtual machine and working on it as though it were a bare-metal instance of Microsoft’s uber-popular OS.

I’ve been trying to pivot to a Linux-based setup for the last couple of months, and with Proxmox providing terrific virtualization provisions for Windows 11, it’s a solid option for the few apps and coding tasks where I need a Windows system. Heck, it’s even better for folks like yours truly, who don’t trust Windows 11 and want a clean way to run the OS.

The telemetry services and vulnerabilities remain locked inside an isolated environment

And you can apply different network restrictions on your Windows 11 VM

Depending on what OS faction you owe allegiance to, you’ll have vastly different opinions on Windows 11. But there are certain aspects where even the most hardcore Windows lover will agree with Linux enthusiasts. One of these is the excessive amount of telemetry and data-tracing services that siphon diagnostic information, app usage, and other private data from your Windows 11 system. It also doesn’t help that Windows has a larger attack surface for malware, so you have to be a lot more cautious on Microsoft’s flagship OS than on an immutable Linux distribution.

Hosting a Windows 11 virtual machine on Proxmox can make these issues more bearable – at least to a certain extent. Look, a Windows VM will still send telemetry data to Microsoft’s servers, but since it’s not your host OS, you can just switch to a different (preferably Linux/FreeBSD-based) VM for your private tasks. Likewise, there are certain malware types that can escape the virtual machine and target your PVE host, but you still get extra protection from the isolation aspect of a VM.

And I haven’t even mentioned the network settings you could modify for your Windows virtual machine on Proxmox. Rather than running a barebones Windows setup and modifying the firewall rules inside the OS, you can use VLANs to further isolate your Windows 11 virtual machine from the rest of your VM and LXC collection.

Snapshots make troubleshooting broken updates a lot simpler

Being able to roll back virtual machines is an amazing feature of hypervisors, and it’s especially useful for Windows 11 setups. Microsoft doesn’t have a decent track record for updates, and it’s not uncommon to encounter issues after Windows 11 automatically installs new drivers and packages. I typically rely on restore points to recover from broken updates on a bare-metal setup, but this process can take a long time when you’ve got large volumes of data stored on your Windows 11 device.

Meanwhile, Proxmox snapshots barely take less than a minute to roll back broken updates – and I say that as someone who frequently reverts a Windows 11 dev VM after botching my experiments. Throw in the dedicated backups I can save to a PBS instance, and you can see why I love running all my coding tasks inside a Windows 11 virtual machine instead of a bare-metal setup.

The performance is surprisingly decent

You can directly bypass the TPM requirement as well

Let me preface this section by adding that the performance of a virtualized instance of an OS – especially when it’s something as bloated as Windows – will always be inferior to that of its bare-metal counterpart. That said, Proxmox’s lightweight nature, KVM roots, and support for VirtIO ISOs reduce the performance and compatibility problems quite a lot. In fact, I’ve got an old gaming laptop from 2017 that doesn’t technically support Windows 11, but the virtualized TPM module lets me access the OS without relying on modifications from the Rufus imager.

I’ve tested Windows 11 VMs across a multitude of hardware combinations, and they work well on all devices released in the last decade. The VirtIO drivers, for instance, not only let me use virtual SCSI drives and network adapters on a Windows VM, but also reduce latency and improve performance. Throw in a SPICE display (or better yet, remote desktop for Windows 11 Pro VMs), and you’ve got a fairly responsible virtual machine that can handle the majority of your Windows tasks.

GPU passthrough turns your Windows 11 VM into a gaming machine

Of course, you’re bound to need a graphics card for gaming, AI-training, visual rendering, and other advanced tasks. Fortunately, Proxmox lets you pass PCI devices to virtual machines, including full-fledged graphics cards. The only caveat is that your host system needs an IOMMU implementation, but this facility is available on most consumer-tier motherboards, mini-PCs, and even NAS units.

Plus, enabling GPU passthrough is a lot easier than it used to be, with tools like the Proxmox Enhanced Configuration Utility taking care of the whole process. I’ve even tried setting up a remote gaming VM on my old Ryzen 5 1600 + GTX 1080 PC using Parsec, and it works pretty well for most modern titles in my Steam library.