I don’t have any of the Minisforum gear myself or experience, but I did a few quick checks online after seeing your post, and the MS‑02 Ultra and MS‑03 do seem to get a fair bit of positive attention in home‑lab circles. The big selling point appears to be the RAM capacity, the MS‑02 Ultra going up to 256 GB and the MS‑03 up to 128 GB is a massive step up from the Microserver Gen10’s 32 GB limit.
From what I’ve read, Proxmox VE is very popular and much more flexible than ESXi when it comes to hardware support. That should help avoid the usual VMware situation where older Microservers suddenly stop being supported after an ESXi update. Proxmox also doesn’t need a hardware RAID card, which could save a decent chunk of money if you’re moving away from the HPE setup.
The Minisforum boxes supporting NVMe storage looks like a nice upgrade too, definitely quicker than 3.5″ SATA drives for VM workloads. The extra 10 GbE / 2.5 GbE ports on the MS‑02 Ultra look good, but unless your switch is faster than 1 Gb, you probably wouldn’t notice much difference day‑to‑day.
RAM prices seem to be the biggest downside at the moment, but hopefully they’ll settle over time. Wouldn’t surprise me if Minisforum eventually release an MS‑03 Ultra as well.
Overall, based on the reviews I’ve seen online, Proxmox VE seems well‑liked and the Minisforum hardware looks like a solid option if you’re after something with more headroom than the Microserver/ESXi route.
FYI- Minisforum isn’t more popular in business than say VMware. VMware is still the standard in most companies. Minisforum is mainly popular in home labs and learning setups, which actually makes it a good option if looking to build new skills or try something more flexible like Proxmox. 
In a completely sane world, madness is the only freedom (J.G.Ballard).
You need to login in order to vote