Unleashing the Power of Proxmox: A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating Containers for Effortless Virtualization

Prashant Divate
5 min readJul 15, 2023

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what is Proxmox VE ?

Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) is a powerful open-source virtualization management platform that combines the flexibility of virtualization with container-based technologies. It allows users to create and manage virtual machines (VMs), containers, and storage resources through a web-based interface, making it user-friendly and accessible. Proxmox offers support for various virtualization technologies, including Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and Linux Containers (LXC), enabling users to deploy and manage a wide range of applications and services. With its robust set of features, such as high availability, live migration, and centralized management, Proxmox has gained popularity among both small-scale and enterprise-level environments, providing a reliable and efficient solution for virtualization needs.

There are several reasons why someone might choose to use Proxmox:

1. Versatility: Proxmox supports both virtual machines (VMs) and containers, allowing users to leverage the benefits of both technologies. This flexibility enables organizations to choose the most suitable approach for their specific workloads, whether it’s running full-fledged operating systems in VMs or utilizing lightweight containers for efficient resource utilization.

2. Cost-effective: Proxmox is an open-source platform, meaning it is free to use and doesn’t require any licensing fees. This can significantly reduce the overall cost of virtualization infrastructure, particularly for small businesses or organizations with budget constraints.

3. Robust Features: Proxmox offers a wide range of powerful features that enhance the management and deployment of virtual resources. These include live migration, high availability clustering, snapshotting, backup/restore capabilities, and comprehensive monitoring. Such features contribute to increased reliability, performance, and scalability of virtual environments.

4. User-friendly Interface: Proxmox provides a web-based interface that simplifies the management of virtual machines, containers, and storage resources. The intuitive interface allows users to perform common tasks easily, such as creating and configuring VMs, monitoring performance, and managing network settings, making it accessible to both seasoned administrators and those new to virtualization.

5. Active Community and Support: Proxmox has a vibrant and supportive community of users and developers. This community-driven approach ensures regular updates, bug fixes, and the availability of extensive documentation and online resources. It also enables users to seek assistance, share knowledge, and benefit from the collective experience of the community.

6. Scalability and Performance: Proxmox is designed to scale seamlessly, allowing organizations to add and manage a large number of virtual machines and containers. It leverages powerful virtualization technologies like KVM and LXC to deliver excellent performance and resource utilization, ensuring optimal efficiency even under heavy workloads.

Overall, Proxmox offers a feature-rich, cost-effective, and user-friendly virtualization platform that caters to a wide range of needs, from small businesses to large enterprises. Its versatility, robust features, and supportive community make it an attractive choice for organizations seeking a reliable and efficient virtualization solution.

Steps to create a new container:

  1. Log in to the Proxmox web interface and you’ll see below screen

2. Click on Create CT in the top right corner

3. Select the appropriate node and resource pool then set the hostname and password as shown, and hit next

4. On this screen select the appropriate storage and Ubuntu template image. In my case, I’m creating CT for Ubuntu 22.04.

5. In this screen you can see the storage but this storage is different from the previous stage. This storage is nothing but the hard disk storage and on that hard disk will going to create the rootfs partition for CT (e.g 1TB)

6. In the next stage we will set the CPU cores we want to allocate for the container and hit next

7. Now we will configure the RAM and swap partitions as shown

8. In this stage mostly network-related configurations are there. If you want the dynamic IP address allocation, please keep in mind to check the DHCP button as shown below

9. After this click on next and in the DHCP stage don’t change anything and hit next.

10. Now you’re done with all the configurations and after confirming it Proxmox will start the process of creating CT. After the successful creation of CT, you’ll get to see the below window.

As you can see here I created the CT-153 successfully and in the blurred area, you will get ssh keys for the CT.

One thing to note is, in step-1 we set the hostname and password the hostname is not the actual username to access the container but the same password is automatically set for the default user as root.

Hooray, you did it !!

If you need more information about Proxmox feel free to comment I’ll try to address them in a new technical post.

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Prashant Divate
Prashant Divate

Written by Prashant Divate

An Embedded Software Engineer. Artist by nature and developer by passion, passionate learner. Open source lover and after all a wonderful human being.

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