Remote Lab, Part 2: Configuring Proxmox

• Part 1 (Introduction, OVH configuration.)
• Part 2 (Configuring Proxmox. You’re here!)
• Part 3 (Installing pfSense.)
• Part 4 (Configuring pfSense.)

Now, we’ll need to install Proxmox on the server. I won’t cover the basic installation in this post, but I am using Proxmox VE 5, which is available as a template during installation with OVH’s wizard.

Securing Proxmox’s web interface⌗

Once you have installed your hypervisor and logged in, I recommend taking a couple of extra steps to improve security, because the web interface is public facing:

1. Set up your own administrative user and disable the default one.
2. Set up two-factor authentication. I followed this guide.
3. Get a valid SSL certificate. I followed this guide to get a certificate from Let’s Encrypt using acme.sh (but the steps using certbot look good, too).
4. Disable password authentication over SSH and use key authentication instead.

Disabling the enterprise apt repository⌗

Unless you have a Proxmox subscription, apt will fail with an exit code of 100. This is because it is trying to read from the subscription-only enterprise apt repository.

Comment out the only line in /etc/apt/sources.list.d/pve-enterprise.list and run apt update.

Network bridges⌗

For the most basic setup, three network bridges are required (which will become the WAN, LAN and OPT1 interfaces in our router). These are configured in the host node’s network settings.

Virtual hardware for pfSense⌗

Below are the current specifications for my router’s virtual hardware. Your mileage may vary.

In the next part, we’ll install pfSense and configure the basic interfaces.

Read part 3