Proxmox VE 9 from zero to hero, on a real lab.

The lab

One lab, built lab after lab

These are not isolated exercises. All the labs take place on the same lab, which grows as you go: each lab starts from what the previous ones left configured and documents it in its Final state section. By the end of the path you have built, and stress-tested, a complete Proxmox VE datacenter.

Lab 01 describes the hardware, the networks, the VLANs and the addressing plan, and explains how to prepare everything before you start.

flowchart TB
    INET(("Internet or<br/>corporate network"))
    SW{{"Lab switch<br/>native network and tagged VLANs"}}
    SVC["netsvc<br/>HTTP proxy and NTP"]
    INET --- SVC
    SVC --- SW
    RTR["rtr-core<br/>lab router"] --- SW
    N13["desopve01, 02, 03<br/>Proxmox VE cluster"] --- SW
    N4["desopve04<br/>standalone Proxmox VE"] --- SW
    DC["desopve-dc01<br/>Active Directory and DNS"] --- SW
    NAS["desonas<br/>TrueNAS: NFS, SMB, iSCSI"] --- SW
    BK["desopbs01 and desopdm01<br/>Backup Server and Datacenter Manager"] --- SW

The lab: one switch with tagged VLANs connects every machine used in the path.

The path

Part 0, then A → B → C → D

The four tracks are meant to be followed in this order. Before each lab, check its Dependencies: the dependency graph summarizes them all.

1. 0 Base lab 7
2. A Storage 12
3. B Network 15
4. C Compute 8
5. D Integrated services 11

0

Part 0 – The base lab

Domain controller, Proxmox VE installation, repositories and updates, SSH and the command line, a three-node cluster, the first VM and container.

Labs 01–077 labsLab 01

A

A – Storage

LVM, ZFS and replication, a NAS with NFS, SMB and multipath iSCSI, snapshots, Ceph from installation to failures, benchmarking with fio.

Labs 08–1912 labsLab 08

B

B – Network

Bridges and VLANs, bonding, dedicated networks, Open vSwitch, routing and NAT, IPv6, a virtual router, SDN up to EVPN and Fabrics, the firewall.

Labs 20–3415 labsLab 20

C

C – Compute

KVM and QEMU under the hood, memory, virtual disks and controllers, Linux and Windows VMs, templates and cloud-init, LXC containers, hotplug and limits.

Labs 35–428 labsLab 35

D

D – Integrated services

Active Directory, permissions and tokens, 2FA, backup with vzdump and Proxmox Backup Server, migrations, high availability, import from ESXi, metrics, API, Datacenter Manager.

Labs 43–5311 labsLab 43

+

Appendices

Upgrading from Proxmox VE 8 to 9, credentials and addresses, troubleshooting, rebuilding the lab as virtual machines.

Appendices A–DAppendix A

Lab structure

How the labs are organized

The labs share a common structure, shaped around each topic, so you know where to look.

Dependencies

The labs to complete first, and the machines and services you need.

Objectives and How it works

The result you will verify at the end, and only the theory needed to get there.

Procedure

Numbered steps, with the configurations, screenshots and outputs of the tests described.

Verification and tests

What to check and which result counts as success, sometimes with deliberately induced failures.

Final state

What stays configured for the following labs.

What you learned

The technical decisions you can now make, plus References to the official documentation.

Software versions and the characteristics of the environment are part of the exercise: if you repeat a test on a different system, some outputs and results may differ.

Start here

Getting started

1. Read Lab 01: the hardware, the networks and how to prepare the switch, the router and the network-services server.

2. Choose the lab password: the manual shows it as <lab-password> (Appendix B).

3. Continue in order with Part 0, then with tracks A, B, C and D.

No servers at hand? Appendix D explains how to rebuild the same lab as virtual machines on a single Proxmox VE server.

Obscured hardware data

In the screenshots, the data that identify the lab hardware are obscured: disk serial numbers, MAC addresses of the server network cards, CPU and disk models. In the text output the same data are replaced by placeholders such as <seriale-disco-1>. On your hardware you will see different values.

An open community

How to contribute

Proxmox Community is meant to grow with the people who use Proxmox every day. Do you have a guide, a production story, a fix or a translation? Every proposal arrives as a pull request on GitHub and is reviewed before publication.

ContributeNext-Guard/Proxmox