The lab and the path
A hands-on path through Proxmox VE 9.2: you start from an empty lab and end up with a complete datacenter with a cluster, shared storage, Ceph, SDN, backup and high availability.
The labs share a common structure, shaped around the topic of each one:
- Dependencies: the labs to complete first, and the machines and services you need;
- Objectives: the operational result you will be able to verify at the end;
- How it works: only the theory the test needs, with pointers to earlier labs;
- 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 lab state: what stays configured for the following labs;
- What you learned: the technical decisions you can now make.
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.
The credentials and addresses used throughout the manual are in Appendix B.
Conventions
Section titled “Conventions”- Lab. All the labs take place on the same lab, described and prepared in Lab 01: physical servers, a switch with VLANs, a router and a network services server. To rebuild it as virtual machines on a single Proxmox VE server, see Appendix D.
- Password.
<lab-password>stands for the single lab password, which you choose: see Appendix B. - Redacted hardware data. In the screenshots, the data that identify the lab hardware are redacted: disk serial numbers, MAC addresses of the servers’ 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. - Commands and output. The title of a command block (for example
root@desopve01) tells you where to run it, and the copy button copies only the command. Output appears in separate blocks, without a copy button, and shows what the documented test produced.
How it is organized
Section titled “How it is organized”You start with Part 0, which builds the base lab. The four tracks then follow in the order A → B → C → D: many labs reuse what the previous ones left configured, for example Ceph (lab 17) and the networks of track B. Before each lab, check its Dependencies; the graph at the bottom of this page summarizes them.
Part 0 – The base lab
Section titled “Part 0 – The base lab”Track A – Storage
Section titled “Track A – Storage”Track B – Network
Section titled “Track B – Network”Track C – Compute
Section titled “Track C – Compute”Track D – Integrated services
Section titled “Track D – Integrated services”Appendices
Section titled “Appendices”Dependencies between labs
Section titled “Dependencies between labs”flowchart TD
subgraph P0["Part 0 – The base lab"]
L01["01 Architecture"]
L02["02 Domain controller"]
L03["03 PVE installation"]
L04["04 First access"]
L05["05 SSH and CLI"]
L06["06 Cluster"]
L07["07 First VM and container"]
end
subgraph PA["A – Storage"]
L08["08 Storage model"]
L09["09 LVM"]
L10["10 ZFS"]
L11["11 ZFS replication"]
L12["12 TrueNAS"]
L13["13 NFS"]
L14["14 SMB"]
L15["15 iSCSI"]
L16["16 Snapshots"]
L17["17 Ceph 1"]
L18["18 Ceph 2"]
L19["19 fio benchmark"]
end
subgraph PB["B – Network"]
L20["20 Bridges and VLANs"]
L21["21 Bonding"]
L22["22 Dedicated networks"]
L23["23 Open vSwitch"]
L24["24 Routing and NAT"]
L25["25 IPv6"]
L26["26 Virtual router"]
L27["27 SDN Simple"]
L28["28 SDN VLAN and QinQ"]
L29["29 SDN VXLAN"]
L30["30 SDN EVPN"]
L31["31 SDN Fabrics"]
L32["32 Firewall 1"]
L33["33 Firewall 2"]
L34["34 Performance and troubleshooting"]
end
subgraph PC["C – Compute"]
L35["35 KVM and QEMU"]
L36["36 Memory"]
L37["37 Virtual disks"]
L38["38 Linux VM"]
L39["39 Windows VM"]
L40["40 Templates and cloud-init"]
L41["41 LXC containers"]
L42["42 Hotplug and limits"]
end
subgraph PD["D – Integrated services"]
L43["43 AD realm"]
L44["44 Users and permissions"]
L45["45 2FA"]
L46["46 vzdump backup"]
L47["47 Proxmox Backup Server"]
L48["48 Migrations"]
L49["49 High availability"]
L50["50 Import from ESXi"]
L51["51 Notifications and metrics"]
L52["52 API and automation"]
L53["53 Datacenter Manager"]
end
L01 --> L02
L02 --> L03
L03 --> L04
L04 --> L05
L05 --> L06
L06 --> L07
L07 --> L08
L08 --> L09
L09 --> L10
L10 --> L11
L02 --> L12
L08 & L12 --> L13
L13 --> L14
L11 & L12 --> L15
L13 & L15 --> L16
L14 --> L17
L15 & L17 --> L18
L15 & L17 --> L19
L18 --> L20
L20 --> L21
L21 --> L22
L21 --> L23
L23 --> L24
L24 --> L25
L21 --> L26
L22 & L24 --> L27
L27 --> L28
L28 --> L29
L19 & L29 --> L30
L30 --> L31
L25 & L26 & L31 --> L32
L32 --> L33
L33 --> L34
L19 & L22 --> L35
L25 & L35 --> L36
L35 --> L37
L35 --> L38
L37 & L38 --> L39
L27 & L38 --> L40
L40 --> L41
L36 & L37 & L40 --> L42
L33 --> L43
L40 & L43 --> L44
L44 --> L45
L41 & L44 --> L46
L46 --> L47
L33 & L39 & L40 --> L48
L48 --> L49
L39 --> L50
L46 & L49 --> L51
L44 --> L52
L47 & L48 --> L53