I have never used Proxmox before for virtual machines. I was prepared to use VMWare ESXi for this project, but was looking for an option that would allow me to use features only available using vSphere which comes with a cost. After doing some research I ran across Proxmox. I was ready to try something new, and Proxmox offered all of the features I was looking for. So, I figured I would test it out on this build. The steps below walk through how to install Proxmox and configure a cluster.

Prerequisite: Creating a New Home Hacking Lab with Proxmox

Installing Proxmox and Configuring a Cluster

I installed Proxmox by downloading the ISO and imaging a USB drive. From there it was a simple process of booting the servers to the USB and installing Proxmox. As mentioned in the design, I placed these devices on a separate segment of my home network and assigned the IP range 172.16.1.0/24. Each host was assigned a hostname and IP:

  • vmhost1 – 172.16.1.10
  • vmhost2 – 172.16.1.11
  • vmhost3 – 172.16.1.12

After I installed Proxmox, I logged into each host using the web interface: https://[host IP address]:8006. From here I could configure a cluster so I could access all of the machines from a single interface and take advantage of features like VM migration and software defined networking. Creating a cluster in Proxmox is pretty straightforward. You create the cluster and then get the join information and use it to join the other hosts. Here is a picture of my cluster after all the machines were joined.

Screenshot of Proxmox cluster with three hosts, node ID, and IP address. Cluster name is LabNetwork.
Lab Network Proxmox cluster

After the creating the cluster, logging in to any host will give you a Datacenter view with all of your cluster hosts.

Proxmox datacenter view with three virtual hosts and datacenter summary showing a good cluster status.
Lab Network Proxmox datacenter view

Uploading the ISO images

After configuring the cluster, I need to upload the ISO images for each of the servers and workstations. This is a time consuming process, but part of the preparation. I uploaded all of the images I needed to the local storage on each of the hosts.

View of ISO images section of the local storage on vmhost1.
ISO images view on vmhost1

Here are the links to get all of the images I used:

That’s it, it doesn’t take much to install Proxmox and configure a cluster. Now that I have the software images uploaded, I am ready to configure software defined networking to allow me to segment the network.

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