ProxmoxVE

Initial Installation / Configuration¶

Proxmox Virtual Environment is an open source server virtualization management solution based on QEMU/KVM and LXC. You can manage virtual machines, containers, highly available clusters, storage and networks with an integrated, easy-to-use web interface or via CLI.

Create the first Node¶

You will need to download the Proxmox VE 8.1 ISO Installer from the Official Proxmox Website. Once it is downloaded, you can use Balena Etcher or Rufus to deploy Proxmox onto a server.

Set-VMProcessor -VMName <VMName> -ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $true # (1)
Get-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName <VMName> | Set-VMNetworkAdapter -MacAddressSpoofing On # (2)

Networking¶

You will need to set a static IP address, in this case, it will be an address within the 20GbE network. You will be prompted to enter these during the ProxmoxVE installation. Be sure to set the hostname to something that matches the following FQDN: proxmox-node-01.MOONGATE.local.

iSCSI Initator Configuration¶

You will need to add the iSCSI initiator from the proxmox node to the allowed initiator list in TrueNAS Core under "Sharing > Block Shares (iSCSI) > Initiators Groups"

In this instance, we will reference Group ID: 2. We need to add the iniator to the "Allowed Initiators (IQN)" section. This also includes the following networks that are allowed to connect to the iSCSI portal:

• 192.168.101.0/24
• 192.168.102.0/24
• 192.168.103.0/24
• 192.168.104.0/24

To get the iSCSI Initiator IQN of the current Proxmox node, you need to navigate to the Proxmox server's webUI, typically located at https://<IP>:8006 then log in with username root and whatever you set the password to during initial setup when the ISO image was mounted earlier.

• On the left-hand side, click on the name of the server node (e.g. proxmox-node-01 or proxmox-node-02)
• Click on "Shell" to open a CLI to the server
• Run the following command to get the iSCSI Initiator (IQN) name to give to TrueNAS Core for the previously-mentioned steps:

  cat /etc/iscsi/initiatorname.iscsi | grep "InitiatorName=" | sed 's/InitiatorName=//'
  

Disable Enterprise Subscription functionality¶

You will likely not be paying for / using the enterprise subscription, so we are going to disable that functionality and enable unstable builds. The unstable builds are surprisingly stable, and should not cause you any issues.

Add Unstable Update Repository:

# Add to the end of the file
# Non-Production / Unstable Updates
deb https://download.proxmox.com/debian bookworm pve-no-subscription

Comment-Out Enterprise Repository:

# deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve bookworm pve-enterprise

Pull / Install Available Updates:

apt-get update
apt dist-upgrade
reboot

NIC Teaming¶

You will need to set up NIC teaming to configure a LACP LAGG. This will add redundancy and a way for devices outside of the 20GbE backplane to interact with the server.

• Ensure that all of the network interfaces appear as something similar to the following:

  /etc/network/interfaces

  iface eno1 inet manual
  iface eno2 inet manual
  # etc
  

• Adjust the network interfaces to add a bond:

  /etc/network/interfaces

  auto eno1
  iface eno1 inet manual
  
  auto eno2
  iface eno2 inet manual
  
  auto bond0
  iface bond0 inet manual
          bond-slaves eno1 eno2
          bond-miimon 100
          bond-mode 802.3ad
          bond-xmit-hash-policy layer2+3
  
  auto vmbr0
  iface vmbr0 inet static
          address 192.168.0.11/24
          gateway 192.168.0.1
          bridge-ports bond0
          bridge-stp off
          bridge-fd 0
  #        bridge-vlan-aware yes # I do not use VLANs
  #        bridge-vids 2-4094 # I do not use VLANs (This could be set to any VLANs you want it a member of)
  

• Reboot the server again to make the networking changes take effect fully. Use iLO / iDRAC / IPMI if you have that functionality on your server in case your configuration goes errant and needs manual intervention / troubleshooting to re-gain SSH control of the proxmox server.

Generalizing VMs for Cloning / Templating:¶

These are the commands I run after cloning a Linux machine so that it resets all information for the machine it was cloned from.

sudo nano /etc/hostname

sudo nano /etc/hosts

rm -f /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure=/etc/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure

rm -f /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure=/etc/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure

reboot

Configure Alerting¶

Setting up alerts in Proxmox is important and critical to making sure you are notified if something goes wrong with your servers.

https://technotim.live/posts/proxmox-alerts/