Proxmox Initial Setup in my Home Lab

Overview

I’ve replaced all my home lab VMware hypervisors with Proxmox. While we use vmware at work, and gaining experience in this environment is good. I’ve found the “free” tier of vmware for a home lab limiting and difficult to manage. Proxmox has been a pleasure to use, does not have hardware resources limits, and is a easy to keep updated.

Technical Details

Assumptions and Environment

• Server Disk Layout:
  • 300G boot array
  • 10T storage array

Create the Boot Media (using macOS)

• Download the latest image: https://www.proxmox.com/en/downloads/category/iso-images-pve
• Use balenaEtcher to write the proxmox-ve_7.2-1.iso image to a USB drive.

Boot from USB Drive and Install

• Follow the directions on screen.

Web or SSH Into the New Server

• Connect to the Web Interface: https://192.168.86.2:8006

  OR

• ssh to a root shell:

  ssh root@192.168.86.2
  

Enable the “free” Subscription Update Servers (CLI)

• Move the “enterprise” repos to another location in case you want to use them at a later date:

  mv /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list ~/
  

• Create and edit a new apt repo:

  vi /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-no-enterprise.list
  

• Add the following lines to this file:

  #deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-enterprise
  
  deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib
  deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib
  
  # PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
  # NOT recommended for production use
  deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription
  
  # security updates
  deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib
  

Update the Server (CLI)

• Run apt to update the server:

  apt update
  apt upgrade
  

VM Boot Media Image Location

• The default location for “cdrom” boot images is: /var/lib/vz/template/iso

The End

• That is it. It just works.