ProxMox Lab

by adminotaurin Home Labon Posted on

Proxmox is an open source hypervisor that can run on a laptop, desktop , or dedicated server of your choice. The benefits of having a home lab is that you can experiment with different operating systems and technology stacks. You can even reference decyphertek read the docs to build a server of your choice.

  • Find a dedicated server to install proxmox.
  • Ethernet connection is required to run Proxmox.
  • Download Proxmox VE ISO Installer
  • Burn Proxmox to usb via Balena Etcher
  • Live boot usb F2/F12 ( This is specific to your laptop, desktop, or dedicated server, please research)
  • Follow the install instructions.
  • Reference Proxmox VE Admin Guide

After a successful install, you should be able to access your Proxmox dashboard from a different computer that is on the same network, by typing in the IP address of the server, which can be found by running the following . (EX: https://192.168.1.7:8006 ) 

 $ ifconfig
<OR>
$ ip addr

If you want to access the dashboard from the same computer, you need to install xfce desktop via the following command. 

$ apt install task-xfce-desktop -y

Once installed you have to run startx to get the gui to run.

$ startx

You can then open a browser and access the server via https://127.0.0.1:8006 (Proxmox VE Ports ). Now that you made it this far. You can learn by doing. See if you can upload a few Linux ISOs and get some Vms up and running.

ProxMox Lab: Linux ISO

There is a lot of Linux distros to choose from. I have provided a list of some of the more common ones.

ProxMox Lab – Hardware

Below is some suggestions of different hardware that you can use for a home lab, depending on your requirements. These are just suggestions , you are free to repurpose any old computer. There is hardware limitations if you are running multiple VMs, it is suggested to have better specifications that can handle the VM resources.