Hardware notes

• CPU with virtualisation (VT-x/AMD-V) enabled in BIOS
• ECC RAM for servers; plan RAM first — it runs out before CPU
• Separate boot disks (mirrored) from VM storage
• At least two network ports (management + VM traffic)

Install

Boot the Proxmox VE ISO, choose ZFS mirror (RAID1) for the boot disks, set the hostname as a fully qualified name (pve1.example.lan) and a static management IP.

After install

1. Switch to the no-subscription repository (or buy a subscription for enterprise updates) and disable the enterprise repo if unlicensed.
2. apt update && apt full-upgrade, reboot.
3. Set up email notifications (Datacenter → Notifications).
4. Create an admin user with two-factor authentication instead of using root@pam daily.
5. Configure NTP (chrony) — clusters and Ceph hate clock drift.