How to Install Proxmox VE 8 Detailed Guide
Installing Proxmox VE 8 (PVE) allows running KVM virtual machines, QEMU and orchestrating LXC containers in the open source virtualization environment.
Virtualization is based on Debian, allows you to create new machines and templates, live snapshots, dumps, backups, facilitates administration and reduces disaster recovery time
Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) integrates the ability to perform synchronization between nodes, create and manage clusters, use REST APIs, ZFS and Ceph filesystems.
You can find the list of packages in the distribution, new releases and other information on Distrowatch
With Proxmox Backup Server you can make atomic and deduplicated backups of VMs and containers, restore virtual machines live, browse the contents of backups, and use many other features that are very important for complete enterprise virtualization
If you need professional and knowledgeable advice, try our Proxmox Support
Install Proxmox VE 8
To install Proxmox VE 8, you need to download the ISO image, from the official Proxmox website. Once we boot from USB, the live installer will guide us through the installation.
After the installation is complete, we will be able to connect to the HTTPS interface via port 8006, Proxmox's default
Proxmox License
Proxmox is an excellent alternative to VMWare, offering full virtualization at a fraction of the cost by supporting virtual machines and lxc containers
At the time of writing the Proxmox license costs 110€ year "Community" version, per CPU socket (yes you got it right, per physical CPU, regardless of the number of cores) and grants access to all features:
- Access to Enterprise repository
- Complete feature-set
- Community support
The other subscriptions guarantee direct support in case of incidents, with guaranteed fast response times.
You can find Proxmox license prices and more details at this link on the official website
Version comparison
PVE 8 implements many updates in virtualization, containers, and stability fixes
The new version is based on Debian 12 with the latest kernels and updates to offer more support for new hardware.
The previous version, Proxmox 7, is based on Debian 11 "Bullseye," whose support is set to end, and is to date guaranteed until July 2024
1. Create a bootable USB device.
For Linux users, once Proxmox VE has been downloaded, it will be sufficient to write with dd directly the image to the bootable USB device with these commands
Let's identify the device just inserted in this case
/dev/sddsudo dmesg | tail[ 6141.877937] sdd: sdd1We enter the directory where we downloaded PVE
cd $HOME/DownloadedWe copy the file to the device we identified earlier, replacing
DEVICE_USBin the command belowsudo dd bs=1M conv=fdatasync if=./proxmox-ve_*.iso of=/dev/DEVICE_USB
On Windows it is recommended to use balenaEtcher, following the guided path and selecting ISO and DVD, alternatively Rufus is available remembering to use the "flash from file" and "dd mode" option
For Mac users, the process is very similar to Linux, however, a few more steps are required.
The complete guide is available on the official Wiki at the Prepare installation media page
2. Start the installation
We start our server from USB device and we will be presented with the bootloader, with "Install Proxmox VE" selected as the default. Via the enter key we launch the run
On the next screen we are prompted to accept the license
We select the disk, possibly we can select the filesystem, or configure a RAID.
We configure the time zone of the machine.
We set the password of the root user, which we will use for administration.
Proxmox supports authentication via Active Directory and LDAP, groups, and granular permissions on users.
We configure a static IP address for the PVE virtualization environment.
The installation configurations at this point are finished, we verify that we have configured everything correctly in the final summary and proceed to install Proxmox VE
Once the installation operations are finished, we reboot and after a few seconds, we will be presented with the Proxmox console with machine IP address.
3. Proxmox web interface connection
The default port of Proxmox is 8006 in HTTPS, to connect we use our favorite browser, in my case Firefox, using the address that is displayed in the console at IP-of-Proxmox:8006
We accept the self-generated HTTPS certificate
After entering our administrator(root) credentials we can use the administration interface
Virtual Machines and LXC Containers
Unlike virtual machines, containers do not use a hypervisor (software that allows multiple instances of operating systems to run) and save resources, which would be wasted by virtualization.
Normally the cost in resources of virtualization, is 10 to 15 percent, for example, Microsoft claims an overhead for Hyper-V of 9 to 12 percent
Containers on the other hand, even with isolation layers, make calls to the host kernel, and have a loss of less than 1%
In future posts we will look at how to run our first LXC container
Proxmox VE Professional Consulting?
Free 30m Analysis to Optimize Your PVE. Contact us now for your Proxmox Consultation!
