Proxmox VE: A Beginner's Setup Guide for Your Homelab

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proxmox virtualization homelab hypervisor

Proxmox is a Type 1 hypervisor that runs directly on bare metal. Install it on a machine and you get VMs and LXC containers — with a web UI to manage all of it from any browser on your network.

It's free. It's stable. The paid support tier is optional.

Hardware Requirements

Proxmox runs on almost any x86-64 machine with at least 4GB of RAM. For a usable homelab host, aim for:

  • 8GB+ RAM (16GB lets you run several VMs comfortably)
  • An SSD or NVMe for the OS and container storage
  • A second drive or pool for VM disk images
  • Intel VT-x or AMD-V enabled in BIOS

The Beelink EQ12 mini PC runs Proxmox well on the cheap. If you want something with expansion room, any used enterprise desktop with an i5 and 16GB ECC RAM works fine.

Installation

  1. Download the Proxmox VE ISO from proxmox.com
  2. Flash it to a USB stick with Balena Etcher or Rufus
  3. Boot from USB, follow the installer — set a static IP, hostname and root password
  4. After reboot, access the web UI at https://your-ip:8006

The installer warns about no valid subscription. Ignore it. The free tier is fully functional.

First Things to Configure

Remove the enterprise repo and add the no-subscription repo:

sed -i 's|^deb|#deb|' /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list
echo "deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-no-subscription" \
  > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-no-subscription.list
apt update && apt dist-upgrade -y

Set up storage: Go to Datacenter > Storage > Add. Point a directory storage at a mounted drive for VM images and ISO files.

VMs vs LXC Containers

Use a VM for anything that needs its own kernel — Windows, pfSense, or a distro with custom kernel modules.

Use an LXC container for Linux services where you don't need isolation at the kernel level — Nginx, databases, monitoring tools. Containers use a fraction of the RAM a VM needs.

Backups

Set up Proxmox Backup Server in a second LXC or VM, or use the built-in backup job to dump VMs to a network share. Schedule daily backups before you store anything important on the host. Storage is cheap. Recovering from scratch is not.

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