Proxmox VE is based on the famous Debian Linux distribution. That means that you have access to the whole world of Debian packages, and the base system is well documented. The Debian Administrator's Handbook is available online, and provides a comprehensive introduction to the Debian operating system (see [Hertzog13]).
A standard Proxmox VE installation uses the default repositories from Debian, so you get bug fixes and security updates through that channel. In addition, we provide our own package repository to roll out all Proxmox VE related packages. This includes updates to some Debian packages when necessary.
We also deliver a specially optimized Linux kernel, where we enable all required virtualization and container features. That kernel includes drivers for ZFS, and several hardware drivers. For example, we ship Intel network card drivers to support their newest hardware.
The following sections will concentrate on virtualization related topics. They either explains things which are different on Proxmox VE, or tasks which are commonly used on Proxmox VE. For other topics, please refer to the standard Debian documentation.
For production servers, high quality server equipment is needed. Keep in mind, if you run 10 Virtual Servers on one machine and you then experience a hardware failure, 10 services are lost. Proxmox VE supports clustering, this means that multiple Proxmox VE installations can be centrally managed thanks to the included cluster functionality.
Proxmox VE can use local storage (DAS), SAN, NAS and also distributed storage (Ceph RBD). For details see chapter storage.
CPU: 64bit (Intel EMT64 or AMD64)
RAM: 1 GB RAM
Hard drive
One NIC
CPU: 64bit (Intel EMT64 or AMD64), Multi core CPU recommended
RAM: 8 GB is good, more is better
Hardware RAID with batteries protected write cache (BBU) or flash based protection
Fast hard drives, best results with 15k rpm SAS, Raid10
At least two NIC“s, depending on the used storage technology you need more