Part 2- Configuring 3 Node Nested Proxmox VM

In this blog, we’ll set up a 3-node Proxmox cluster using three nested VM’s. By the end, we will have a working cluster ready to host virtual machines and work with most features like live VM migration, VM replication, HA etc on Proxmox.

My base hypervisor is already on Proxmox so I am just going to build few nested Proxmox ve’s on top of it.

Installing Proxmox is as easy as installing ESXi. There are four products here in Proxmox portal.

Download the Proxmox VE Iso from the portal.

Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE): the hypervisor itself
Proxmox Backup Server (PBS): a dedicated backup server for VMs and containers, with incremental backups, deduplication and verification.
Proxmox Datacenter Manager (PDM): one pane of glass over several Proxmox nodes and clusters, even unrelated ones. You can see them all and migrate VMs between clusters.
Proxmox Mail Gateway (PMG): an email security gateway that filters spam and viruses in front of your mail server.

Lab Topology

We will attempt to build a 3-node cluster as per the below configuration.

All VM’s will have the below configs

CPU = 4
RAM = 16GB
1*32 GB disk for OS and 1*64GB disk for Ceph

Upload the Proxmox install file into

root@pve:/tmp# ls -l /var/lib/vz/template/iso/
total 12299436
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1414529024 Sep 21 12:25 b5d678e4-48d6-4442-9b3f-5e4ad9c14f8e-discovery.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1480032256 Oct 19 17:43 proxmox-backup-server_4.2-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1706178560 Oct 19 18:09 proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1474873344 Oct 11 09:43 ubuntu-22.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6518974464 Sep  7 17:47 ubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso

root@pve:/tmp# ls -l /var/lib/vz/template/iso/
total 12299436
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1414529024 Sep 21 12:25 b5d678e4-48d6-4442-9b3f-5e4ad9c14f8e-discovery.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1480032256 Oct 19 17:43 proxmox-backup-server_4.2-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1706178560 Oct 19 18:09 proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 1474873344 Oct 11 09:43 ubuntu-22.04.1-live-server-amd64.iso
-rw-r--r-- 1 root root 6518974464 Sep  7 17:47 ubuntu-26.04-desktop-amd64.iso

Click Create VM button located at the top right of the interface and give the virtual machine a name and choose a VM ID. This is just a identifier

Welcome screen where we select Install Proxmox VE.

Choose the proxmox ISO

Under System pick the SCSI Controller as VirtIO

Pick the first disk /dev/sda as 32 GB and we will use it to install the OS on it.

Pick the second disk /dev/sdb as 64 GB and we will use it to install the Ceph disk on it

Under CPU settings pick the CPU type as Host as this turns on hardware-accelerated KVM

Pick the memory as 16 GB and turn off Ballooning

Pick the network as our bridge network vmbr1 which is our VLAN 1611

Review and click finish to complete installation

Click Start VM

Power on the VM to being configuring Proxmox on the VM

Accept the EULA

Click Options to change the filesystem, the default is ext4 so we will leave it as it is

Choose the location

Pick an administrator password

Under the network settings define the IP and GW settings

Click Install to begin the installation

Wait for install to complete

Reboot when done and login as https://172.16.11.41:8006

Virtual machines can be created via CLI or UI, the CLI syntax is as below

ISO=local:iso/proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso        # put the exact ISO filename here
for n in 1 2 3; do
  qm create 14$n --name pve-n$n --ostype l26 --machine q35 \
    --cpu host --sockets 1 --cores 4 --memory 16384 --balloon 0 \
    --scsihw virtio-scsi-single \
    --scsi0 Local-2TB:32,iothread=1,ssd=1,discard=on \
    --scsi1 Local-2TB:64,iothread=1,ssd=1,discard=on \
    --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,firewall=0 \
    --net1 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,tag=1612,firewall=0 \
    --net2 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,tag=1613,firewall=0 \
    --ide2 $ISO,media=cdrom --boot 'order=scsi0;ide2' --agent 1
done

ISO=local:iso/proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso        # put the exact ISO filename here
for n in 1 2 3; do
  qm create 14$n --name pve-n$n --ostype l26 --machine q35 \
    --cpu host --sockets 1 --cores 4 --memory 16384 --balloon 0 \
    --scsihw virtio-scsi-single \
    --scsi0 Local-2TB:32,iothread=1,ssd=1,discard=on \
    --scsi1 Local-2TB:64,iothread=1,ssd=1,discard=on \
    --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,firewall=0 \
    --net1 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,tag=1612,firewall=0 \
    --net2 virtio,bridge=vmbr1,tag=1613,firewall=0 \
    --ide2 $ISO,media=cdrom --boot 'order=scsi0;ide2' --agent 1
done

Update Repositories – Patches

A fresh install of Proxmox will want to look at an enterprise repository by default so in our case we are a free subscriber, so we just need to update the depot to disable the enterprise ones and enable the free ones.

On all the nodes, just go to Updates → Repositories