After setting up my Proxmox servers, there are a few things I do before I use them for their intended purpose. This ranges from updates, to storage, to networking and VLANS, to uploading ISOs, to clustering, and more. Join me as we pick up where the rest of the proxmox tutorials stop, and that’s everything you need to do to make these production ready (and maybe a bonus item too).
Updates
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list
Proxmox Version 6.X
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deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster main contrib
deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian buster-updates main contrib
# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org buster/updates main contrib
# not for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian buster pve-no-subscription
Proxmox Version 7.X
(for a full guide on Proxmox 7, please see this link)
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deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye main contrib
deb http://ftp.debian.org/debian bullseye-updates main contrib
# security updates
deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security bullseye-security main contrib
# PVE pve-no-subscription repository provided by proxmox.com,
# NOT recommended for production use
deb http://download.proxmox.com/debian/pve bullseye pve-no-subscription
Edit /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list
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# deb https://enterprise.proxmox.com/debian/pve buster pve-enterprise
Run
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apt-get update
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apt dist-upgrade
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reboot
Storage
BE CAREFUL. This will wipe your disks.
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fdisk /dev/sda
Then P for partition, then D for delete, then W for write.
Check SMART Monitoring
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smartctl -a /dev/sda
IOMMU (PCI Passthrough)
nano /etc/kernel/cmdline
add intel_iommu=on iommu=pt to the end of this line without line breaks
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root=ZFS=rpool/ROOT/pve-1 boot=zfs intel_iommu=on iommu=pt
Edit /etc/modules
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vfio
vfio_iommu_type1
vfio_pci
vfio_virqfd
run
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update-initramfs -u -k all
then reboot
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reboot
VLAN Aware
If you want to restrict your VLANS
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nano /etc/network/interfaces
Set your VLAN here
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bridge-vlan-aware yes
bridge-vids 20
NIC Team Example
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nano /etc/network/interfaces
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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
bridge-vids 2-4094
#lacp nic team
If you’re running Proxmox 7, see the modified config here for LAGG / LACP
Cloning
These are the commands I run after cloning a Linux machine so that it resets all information for the machine it was cloned from.
(Note: If you use cloud-init-aware OS images as described under Cloud-Init Support on https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html, these steps won’t be necessary!)
change hostname
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sudo nano /etc/hostname
- find your hostname and change it
change hosts file
- find your hostname and change it
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sudo nano /etc/hosts
reset machine ID
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rm -f /etc/machine-id /var/lib/dbus/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure=/etc/machine-id
dbus-uuidgen --ensure
regenerate ssh keys
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regen ssh keys
sudo rm /etc/ssh/ssh_host_*
sudo dpkg-reconfigure openssh-server
reboot
Alerts
I’ve added yet another item to my list when setting up a new Proxmox server, and that’s setting up alerts!
Links
⚙️ See all the hardware I recommend at https://l.technotim.live/gear
🚀 Don’t forget to check out the 🚀Launchpad repo with all of the quick start source files