How to setup a Testing Environment with Proxmox on your LAN

This tutorial is the written component of a larger project that will also provide a YouTube video so you can follow along at your own pace. It is currently incomplete so check back regularly.

About this Project

Good documentation is hard to come by and what works for one person does not always work for all. In the forums there was a request to make using virtualisation easy to understand and all the little details explained fully. This project aims to achieve that and will possibly be a work in progress for a while as we perfect everything. As always Community contribution is the key to success so if you find issue with or dont understand something please speak up so we can change things.

Outcomes

By the end of this tutorial I would expect you to be able to do the following.

1. Build a fresh Proxmox server
2. Understand Virtualization
3. Understand Virtualization System Requirements
4. Download templates
5. Understand the different virtualisation packages
6. Use Proxmox' interface
7. Setup an OVZ container
8. Setup a Virtual Machine from ISO
9. Understand Turnkeylinux setup scripts
10. Backup your server with TKLBAM
11. Use Putty and understand SSH
12. Understand and setup port forwarding and NAT for external access
13. Use RSA cryptography to secure SSH logins

Please note this section is for LANs and will not cover advanced topics (eg DNS). This will be provided at a later date.

About Proxmox

Proxmox is a free and open source virtualisation platform commonly called things like Virtual Machine Manager (VMM), Bare Matal Hypervisor, Hypervisor, the Host or even the native system - essentially in our case all these terms are equivalent.

It has a ton of features that range from basic to advanced and many we will never touch in this tutorial because our goal is to provide a testing environment on a local LAN only.

You can learn more about Proxmox' features HERE