Proxmox VE inside VirtualBox
How to install Proxmox PVE inside Oracle Virtual Box
- WARNING: Article in development
- Instructions assume VirtualBox 4.3.16
Goals and Prerequisites
For development and testing purposes, it can be useful to install PVE inside a virtual machine on e.g. a laptop. For this to work your laptop needs to support System > Acceleration > Hardware Virtualization: Enable VT-x/AMD-V and run a 64-bit guest.
This will allow you to run Containers (OpenVZ) in Proxmox. It will not allow you to run KVM (Virtual Machines).
Using Virtualbox is a (http://forum.proxmox.com/google.php?cx=partner-pub-124095633701common scenario but can be tricky to get right.
Laptops can be tricky because their network address continually change, and sometimes disappears, whereas desktops can assign a static ip address on a stable network.
The assumption of this article is that the PVE installation needs to be accessible only from the laptop.
These instructions suppose the reader has minimal knowledge of networking, advanced configuration options that assume more knowledge are at Network Model.
Default Network
Proxmox default network is set up at the last stage of configuration to e.g. IP address 10.10.0.2. The webui then runs on port 8006 answering to https.
Stable Network
The objective is to create a network and address that is independent of your laptop's wifi address.
Create Host-Only Network
This network is to permit traffic from the laptop to the Virtualbox.
In Virtualbox, there may be a Host-Only network already configured. This is set up at the Preferences > Network > Host-only Networks tab. Each adapter has an IPv4 address + a IPv4 Network Mask, addresses can be served by a VirtualBox DHCP server, Proxmox PVE is best set up with a static address on the Host-Only network.
Install PVE
Create Virtualbox Virtual Machine for Proxmox
- OS Type: Linux
- Version: Debian (64 bit)
- Disk: Use a SSD if possible. Preallocated might provide faster access.
- Audio: disable
Configure the Network
At the last step in PVE set up you will be asked for an IP address. Choose a static address in the IPv4 Network.
If necessary, you can edit this
Test access
- From the laptop you should be able to ping the static ip address assigned
- From the PVE machine you should be able to ping the network of the host-only IP address