Homelab #1 Getting Started with Proxmox

Opening the series: I’m building my homelab solo.

1. What is Proxmox?

Proxmox VE (Proxmox Virtual Environment), often just called Proxmox, is an open-source virtual machine management platform built on Debian.
Its biggest strength is parallel management of:

• KVM (hardware virtualization)
• LXC (OS-level virtualization)

Everything is managed through a clean Web-based interface.

Some standout features:

• 🖥 Virtualization: KVM + LXC
• ⚙️ Management: Web UI, CLI, REST API
• 🔗 HA Cluster: group multiple nodes for high availability
• 🌐 Network: create up to 4094 network bridges
• 💾 Storage: supports LVM, ZFS, CephFS, SMB/CIFS, NFS,…
• 📦 Backup: backup and restore VMs
• 🔥 Firewall: built-in firewall

Proxmox is completely free (GPL license). If you need official support, you can buy a Subscription from €295/year.

2. Installation process

That USB used to be for Debian 13. Now it’s sacrificed for Proxmox. Farewell, my dude.

I followed this tutorial by Thuận Bùi:
👉 Install Proxmox VE – Thuận Bùi

I thought it would be one-shot, done, but nope… errors everywhere. So I had to sit down and untangle them.

3. Issues during installation

Issue 1: Motherboard won’t boot from Rufus

• Tried Legacy, UEFI, dual boot… still no boot.
• Then I tried Ventoy → finally got into the boot menu.
  

30 chưa phải là Tết. Ventoy cũng thế. I had to listen for the motherboard beeps, then smash Del non-stop, only to realize I forgot to switch back to UEFI.

Issue 2: Nvidia card causes a crash

• When booting from Ventoy, I had to tweak the config and disable the Nvidia driver in the boot options.
• After that, the install was stable.

Issue 3: Wrong Gateway config

• At first I planned a separate network for Proxmox: 192.168.111.2 with gateway 192.168.111.1 for easy management.
• But my router gateway was actually 192.168.1.1. I do have another router in bridge mode, but I was too lazy to keep moving around after an hour of setup. So I consolidated: Proxmox at 192.168.1.200 and gateway 192.168.1.1.
• The fix was simple: open interfaces with nano and edit.
• Probably won’t run more than 50 services anyway. So 200 → 254 should be enough.
• Even after fixing it, the legacy 192.168.111.2 still pops up every time I open Proxmox =))
  

4. Result

And that’s it. Proxmox is installed.

Unexpected bonus: I discovered Ventoy. From now on, just throw ISOs in there and reuse them.

5. Summary

• Old motherboard → Rufus won’t boot
• Switch to Ventoy → boot menu appears
• Nvidia driver crash → add nomodeset
• Installed → Legacy boot can’t see it
• Rebooted 4–5 times 🤯
• Switched to UEFI boot → Proxmox loads 🎉

• Proxmox subnet mismatch (not in 192.168.111.0/24)
• Checked router → found wrong Gateway on Proxmox → no network
  • Router gateway: 192.168.1.1
  • Proxmox IP: 192.168.1.200
• Done ✅

Anyway, when checking the router password I had to climb up to the ceiling twice just to see it, because the first photo came out super blurry.