Proxmox VE installs from a single ISO that you write to a USB stick and boot, and the installer only asks you for a disk, a location, a password and a network configuration. This is how to install Proxmox, from the download page to the first login, then the setup I run before the first virtual machine. The installer leaves the enterprise repository enabled, and no Proxmox updates come through it without a subscription, which is the first thing to change after the reboot.
As of September 2026 the current release is Proxmox VE 9.2, which shipped on May 21, 2026 for x86-64 and is based on Debian 13 (Trixie). The screenshots below come from an earlier install of mine and the wizard’s order hasn’t changed since, so I’ve noted the one screen a current ISO shows differently.
I’ve run Proxmox as my main hypervisor for years, on an old desktop and on a NAS I turned into a whole home lab, and the installer is the part of it I think about least. The first hour after it reboots is the part worth your attention.
Proxmox system requirements: what you need before you install
Proxmox VE needs a 64-bit machine, with virtualization enabled in the BIOS on x86, and it installs on bare metal. The ISO lays down a complete 64-bit Debian system with the Proxmox kernel, KVM, LXC and the web interface, so there’s no operating system to put down first.
- Minimum, which Proxmox says is evaluation only and not for production: a 64-bit x86 CPU (Intel 64 or AMD64) with Intel VT or AMD-V on both the CPU and the motherboard for full KVM virtualization, or 64-bit ARM (ARMv8-A and newer), 1 GB of RAM plus whatever the guests need, a hard drive, and one network card.
- Recommended: 2 GB for the operating system and the Proxmox services on top of guest memory. Add roughly 1 GB of RAM per TB of used storage if you run ZFS or Ceph. Fast redundant storage, ideally SSDs with power-loss protection, and Proxmox recommends redundant Gbit NICs, with more of them depending on your storage and whether you cluster.
- For PCI(e) passthrough, handing a GPU or an HBA to a virtual machine, you also need IOMMU: Intel VT-d or AMD-Vi, or an SMMU on arm64.
These requirements come from Proxmox’s own installation documentation, checked in September 2026.
Check the BIOS before you start the install rather than after. On Intel that’s Intel Virtualization Technology (VT-x) and, if you’ll pass hardware through later, VT-d. On AMD it’s SVM (AMD-V) and AMD-Vi, which many BIOSes just label IOMMU. Some BIOSes group those together and some split them out, so you may have to hunt for them.
Since 9.2 there’s an official 64-bit ARM ISO aimed at NVIDIA Grace and Vera systems, and device-tree-only boards like the Raspberry Pi aren’t supported. If you’re still picking the machine, I keep a guide to the best mini PC for Proxmox, since a small low-power box is what most home labs run this on.
Download the ISO and write the Proxmox VE installer to USB
Download the Proxmox VE ISO from Proxmox directly. That page lists the ARM64 build first, headed For ARM64: Proxmox VE 9.2 ISO Installer. On a normal PC you want the one below it, Proxmox VE 9.2 ISO Installer, version 9.2-1.
The ISO is a hybrid image that copies to a USB stick as a raw sector image, and the docs recommend USB because it’s the faster option. The stick has to be larger than the ISO, can’t be mounted while you write to it, and gets wiped, and Proxmox warns against UNetbootin, which does not work with the Proxmox VE installation image.
Windows or macOS, Etcher: plug the stick in, then open Etcher, select Flash from file and pick the Proxmox VE ISO, then Select target and pick your USB stick, then Flash!
Windows, Rufus: Rufus is the lighter option, but it only works in DD mode. Select your USB stick and the Proxmox VE ISO, select START, select No on the dialog offering a different version of GRUB, then pick DD Image mode in the dialog after it.
Linux: run lsblk before and after plugging the stick in so you know which device it actually is, then write the image with dd.
sudo dd bs=1M conv=fdatasync if=./proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso of=/dev/XYZReplace /dev/XYZ with the device lsblk showed, and check the size matches the stick before you press enter. The wrong letter erases the wrong disk.
macOS, from the terminal: plug the stick in and convert the image first (hdiutil adds the .dmg itself), find and unmount the disk, then write to the raw device (the r in rdisk is deliberate, it’s much faster).
hdiutil convert proxmox-ve_9.2-1.iso -format UDRW -o proxmox-ve_9.2-1
diskutil list
diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskX
sudo dd if=proxmox-ve_9.2-1.dmg bs=1M of=/dev/rdiskXReplace X with the stick’s disk number from diskutil list, matching by size.
How to install Proxmox VE step by step
The installer takes over the whole screen, so it’s worth keeping this page open on a phone while it runs. If the mouse isn’t cooperating, the wizard drives from the keyboard with ALT plus the underlined letter on each button, so ALT+N is Next.
1. Boot from the USB stick. If it won’t boot, get into the firmware setup, enable USB booting, and turn on the virtualization settings above while you’re in there.
2. At the boot menu, select Install Proxmox VE (Graphical). A current ISO also offers terminal UI entries and an Advanced Options submenu with the debug modes, an Automated unattended install, Rescue Boot and Test Memory (memtest86+).
3. Read the license, and if you agree with the terms, select I agree.
4. Select the Target Harddisk, which is the drive Proxmox itself installs to. Everything on that drive goes, and the installer doesn’t add a boot entry for whatever was there, so use a machine you’re willing to erase. Then select Options to set the filesystem.
5. Pick the filesystem you want in the Options dialog, then select OK and continue.
This is the one screen that’s a real decision rather than a form field. The default is ext4, which sits on LVM along with XFS, and that’s what I use on a single boot drive. With two drives and redundant boot in mind, ZFS with a software RAID level or BTRFS RAID1 is chosen in this same dialog, where you select both drives. The Advanced Options tab in that dialog holds ashift, compression, checksum, copies and the ARC size limit. Two warnings go with it: BTRFS is still labelled a technology preview, and ZFS on top of any hardware RAID is not supported and can result in data loss. If there’s a RAID card in the machine, put it in HBA mode or stay on ext4.
6. Select your Country, Time zone and Keyboard Layout. The installer usually detects all three, and the location picks a nearby download server.
7. Set the administrator password (eight characters minimum, and Proxmox recommends twelve or more) and an email address, which is where package update notices and cron errors get sent, so use one you actually read.
8. Select the correct Management Interface (interfaces that are up show a filled circle in the drop-down), enter a Hostname (FQDN), a dotted name like proxmox.home.arpa rather than a bare word, then set the IP address in CIDR form along with the Gateway and the DNS Server. This screen takes IPv4 or IPv6, not both. Dual stack comes after the install.
The hostname becomes the node name, so it’s worth a minute’s thought. Renaming a node afterwards is a manual job that Proxmox says has to be done on an empty node, and it isn’t recommended once that node is in a cluster, so pick a name you’ll keep. A static IP in the installer is only half the job, so what you want to do is set a DHCP reservation for that same address on your router.
9. Check the Summary page, confirm the settings are what you meant, then select Install.
10. Give it a few minutes to copy everything across. Let the copy finish before you touch the stick. The host reboots itself a few seconds later, so pull the stick out once it starts rebooting, before the machine posts again.
Once the install finishes, the machine reboots to a console screen showing the web interface address, https://youripaddress:8006.
If the graphical installer won’t start at all, that’s almost always graphics drivers. Try the Install Proxmox VE (Terminal UI) entry, which is the same wizard in text mode. If that hangs too, highlight it, press e, add nomodeset to the end of the line starting linux, and press Ctrl-X. If the install fails part way, CTRL+ALT+F2 switches to a second console where the actual error is. Older Proxmox installation guides tell you to turn Secure Boot off. Since 8.1 you don’t need to, except to run memtest86+ from the boot menu.
Installing Proxmox on top of an existing Debian system is documented too, but the vendor calls it advanced users only and recommends the ISO for everyone else, which is what I’d do unless you’re on a rented server that won’t boot your own media.
Proxmox setup after the first boot
This is the half that most install guides skip, and it’s where a fresh install goes wrong. The enterprise repository is enabled by default, you don’t have a subscription, and so the machine won’t pull a single Proxmox update until you change it.
Open https://youripaddress:8006 in a browser on the same network. Your browser will object, because the web interface uses a self-signed certificate, which is expected rather than a problem, so accept the risk and continue. Log in with the username root, the realm PAM, and the password you set in the installer, then select OK on the subscription notice (more on that below).
You land on the datacenter view with your one node underneath it. The node has its own summary page, with CPU, memory and storage graphs, and that’s the screen you’ll look at most.
Switch to the no-subscription repository
The first thing I always do is switch to the no-subscription repository, because the enterprise repo requires a paid license and for home use no-subscription is what you want. Proxmox sells subscriptions per occupied physical CPU socket, and Community gets you the enterprise repository plus the community forum, with ticket support starting at Basic. Proxmox’s subscription tiers are worth a read if this is for a business.
There are two ways to make the change. In the web interface, select your node, then Updates, then Repositories, select the pve-enterprise line and select Disable, do the same for the ceph enterprise entry, then select Add and pick No-Subscription from the drop-down. On Proxmox VE 9 those live in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ as deb822 .sources files with Suites: trixie rather than the 8.x single-line .list files.
The other way, and the one I generally use, is the community Proxmox VE Post Install script, which does the whole list in one pass. Never just run a script without actually verifying it. Read the script first, then select your node, then Shell, and run it as root:
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/tools/pve/post-pve-install.sh)"On a 9.x host it reports that the deb822 sources are already correct, then asks whether to disable the enterprise repo, enable no-subscription, add the Ceph and test repositories, and disable the subscription nag. The last prompt offers to disable high availability on a single node. I’d say no to that one, in case you ever want to set it up later. Then it offers to update and reboot.
That nag is the dialog telling you there’s no valid subscription for this server, which appears every time you log in. I normally disable it. If you’d like to support them, buying a subscription is the other way to make it go away, and I’d suggest doing that if you can.
The enterprise repository carries the most stable packages; the no-subscription ones are, in Proxmox’s words, “not always as heavily tested and validated”, which is why they call it testing and non-production use. I have not ever run into any problems with it, but that does not necessarily mean that you’ll never run into any problems.
With the repositories sorted, select the node, then Updates, then Refresh, then Upgrade, and reboot when it’s finished. My Proxmox update tutorial covers that part in more detail. When I recorded my beginner’s guide the machine came back up on 8.4.1, and the same sequence takes you to whatever is current on the day. Proxmox’s own checklist after that is short: the IP configuration and hostname, the timezone, and the firewall settings, which I’ve covered in configuring the firewall on Proxmox.
Add storage and a backup job before you build anything
The boot drive gives you local and local-lvm (local-zfs if you picked ZFS) and nothing else, so any extra drive in the machine has to be added under Datacenter, then Storage, then Add. For a NAS pick NFS, give it an ID, the server address and the export, and set Content to include ISO image and VZDump backup file, which is what I run here. Backing up Proxmox to a Synology NAS covers that, and setting up Proxmox Backup Server is the better option if you want deduplicated incremental backups.
Then add the backup job under Datacenter, then Backup, then Add, before you create anything. Mine runs daily at noon in all mode with thirty days of retention out to the NAS, and it costs nothing to have running before there’s anything worth losing.
Create your first VM or container
Put a guest ISO on the host first: select local in the tree, then ISO Images, then Upload, or Download from URL to pull it straight down. Then select Create VM in the top right, give it a name, note the VM ID, point the VM at that ISO, set the disk size, the CPU cores, the memory and the network bridge (vmbr0 unless you’ve built something else), and start it. Once the guest operating system is up, install the QEMU guest agent inside it, then tick QEMU Guest Agent under the VM’s Options and stop and start the VM, so Proxmox can report its IP address and shut it down cleanly.
Create CT next to it does Linux containers instead. A VM runs its own kernel and is fully isolated, while a container shares the host kernel and uses way less resources. For most people, a container is the right answer for a single Linux service and a VM is the right answer for everything else.
One caveat on all of it: security changes constantly, in Proxmox and in whatever you run on top of it, so nothing here is a guarantee. A hypervisor you expose to the internet needs far more thought than the defaults give you.
Once the repositories are switched over and that first backup job is running, the rest of Proxmox is just virtual machines and containers. I’d spend an evening on throwaway VMs before you put anything on it you’d actually miss.
