Installation

Introduction

Proxmox VE installs the complete operating system and management tools in 3 to 5 minutes (depending on the hardware used).

Including the following:

• Complete operating system (Debian Linux, 64-bit)
• Partition the hard drive with ext4 (alternative ext3 or xfs) or ZFS
• Proxmox VE Kernel with LXC and KVM support
• Complete toolset
• Web based management interface

Please note, by default the complete server is used and all existing data is removed.

If you want to set custom options for the installer, or need to debug the installation process on your server, you can use some special boot options.

Video tutorials

• List of all official tutorials on our Proxmox VE YouTube Channel
• Tutorials in Spanish language on ITexperts.es YouTube Play List

Steps to get your Proxmox VE up and running

Install Proxmox VE server

See Quick installation

Proxmox VE installation (Video Tutorial)

If you need to install the outdated 1.9 release, check Installing Proxmox VE v1.9 post Lenny retirement

Optional: Install Proxmox VE on Debian 6 Squeeze (64 bit)

EOL.

See Install Proxmox VE on Debian Squeeze

Optional: Install Proxmox VE on Debian 7 Wheezy (64 bit)

EOL April 2016

See Install Proxmox VE on Debian Wheezy

Optional: Install Proxmox VE on Debian 8 Jessie (64 bit)

See Install Proxmox VE on Debian Jessie

Developer_Workstations_with_Proxmox_VE_and_X11

This page will cover the install of X11 and a basic Desktop on top of Proxmox. Optional:_Linux_Mint_Mate_Desktop is also available.

Optional: Install Proxmox VE over iSCSI

See Proxmox ISCSI installation

Proxmox VE web interface

Configuration is done via the Proxmox web interface, just point your browser to the IP address given during installation (https://youripaddress:8006). Please make sure that your browser has the latest Oracle Java browser plugin installed. Proxmox VE is tested for IE9, Firefox 10 and higher, Google Chrome (latest).

Default login is "root" and the root password is defined during the installation process.

Configure basic system setting

Please review the NIC setup, IP and hostname.

Note: changing IP or hostname after cluster creation is not possible (unless you know exactly what you do)

Get Appliance Templates

Download

Just go to your content tab of your storage (e.g. "local") and download pre-built Virtual Appliances directly to your server. This list is maintained by the Proxmox VE team and more and more Appliances will be available. This is the easiest way and a good place to start.

Use a NFS share for ISO´s

If you have a NFS server you can use a NFS share for storing ISO images. To start, configure the NFS ISO store on the web interface (Configuration/Storage).

Upload from your desktop

If you already got Virtually Appliances you can upload them via the upload button. To install a virtual machine from an ISO image (using KVM full virtualization) just upload the ISO file via the upload button.

Directly to file system

Templates and ISO images are stored on the Proxmox VE server (see /var/lib/vz/template/cache for openvz templates and /var/lib/vz/template/iso for ISO images). You can also transfer templates and ISO images via secure copy (scp) to these directories. If you work on a windows desktop, you can use a graphical scp client like winscp.

Optional: Reverting Thin-LVM to "old" Behavior of /var/lib/vz (Proxmox 4.2 and later)

If you installed Proxmox 4.2 (or later), you see yourself confronted with a changed layout of your data. There is no mounted /var/lib/vz LVM volume anymore, instead you find a thin-provisioned volume. This is technically the right choice, but one sometimes want to get the old behavior back, which is described here. This section describes the steps to revert to the "old" layout on a freshly installed Proxmox 4.2:

• After the Installation your storage configuration in /etc/pve/storage.cfg will look like this:

dir: local
        path /var/lib/vz
        content iso,vztmpl,backup

lvmthin: local-lvm
        thinpool data
        vgname pve
        content rootdir,images

• You can delete the thin-volume via GUI or manually and have to set the local directory to store images and container aswell. You should have such a config in the end:

dir: local
        path /var/lib/vz
        maxfiles 0
        content backup,iso,vztmpl,rootdir,images

• Now you need to recreate /var/lib/vz

root@pve-42 ~ > lvs
  LV   VG   Attr       LSize  Pool Origin Data%  Meta%  Move Log Cpy%Sync Convert
  data pve  twi-a-tz-- 16.38g             0.00   0.49
  root pve  -wi-ao----  7.75g
  swap pve  -wi-ao----  3.88g

root@pve-42 ~ > lvremove pve/data
Do you really want to remove active logical volume data? [y/n]: y
  Logical volume "data" successfully removed

root@pve-42 ~ > lvcreate --name data -l +100%FREE pve
  Logical volume "data" created.

root@pve-42 ~ > mkfs.ext4 /dev/pve/data
mke2fs 1.42.12 (29-Aug-2014)
Discarding device blocks: done
Creating filesystem with 5307392 4k blocks and 1327104 inodes
Filesystem UUID: 310d346a-de4e-48ae-83d0-4119088af2e3
Superblock backups stored on blocks:
        32768, 98304, 163840, 229376, 294912, 819200, 884736, 1605632, 2654208,
        4096000

Allocating group tables: done
Writing inode tables: done
Creating journal (32768 blocks): done
Writing superblocks and filesystem accounting information: done

• Then add the new volume in your /etc/fstab:

/dev/pve/data /var/lib/vz ext4 defaults 0 1

• Restart to check if everything survives a reboot.

You should end up with a working "old-style" configuration where you "see" your files as it was before Proxmox 4.2

Networking and Firewall

See Network Model and Proxmox VE Firewall