Detailed Course Outline
Each day alternates lecture modules and hands-on labs (09:00-17:00). Labs marked (opt) are optional finishers - most groups complete them.
Day 1 - Foundations: Installation, GUI/CLI, Networking
Lecture modules
- M00 Introduction
- M01 Virtualization concepts and Proxmox VE architecture (KVM/QEMU/LXC, daemons, vSphere and Hyper-V compared)
- M02 Installation, repositories and host baseline (deb822 sources, updates, time, mail notifications)
- M03 Web GUI, users and permissions (PAM, PVE realm, LDAP realm, groups and roles)
- M04 CLI essentials, configuration files and host networking (pmxcfs, pvesh, bridges, VLANs, ifupdown2)
Hands-on labs
- Lab 1.1 First contact: tooling, repositories, updates on all three nodes
- Lab 1.2 Baseline the host: time, DNS, mail notifications, admin user, LDAP realm
- Lab 1.3 GUI vs CLI: qm, pct, pvesm, pvecm - LXC containers incl. OCI images
- Lab 1.4 Build the network: VLAN-aware bridge, tagging and isolation without reboot
- Lab 1.5 Bonding: NIC failover by hand (opt)
Day 2 - Local Storage and Virtual Machines
Lecture modules
- M05 The Proxmox VE storage model and local storage (directory, LVM-thin, ZFS, replication with pvesr)
- M06 Virtual machine anatomy: QEMU/KVM, machine type, firmware, VirtIO, guest agent
- M07 Windows guests done right (VirtIO driver injection, what a production-ready Windows VM needs)
- M08 Templates, clones and cloud-init (full vs linked clones, identity at first boot)
- M09 Monitoring and performance baselines (RRD vs external metric server)
Hands-on labs
- Lab 2.1 Provision local storage: content types, directory storage on your own filesystem
- Lab 2.2 Build a Linux VM (Debian 13) with VirtIO and QEMU guest agent
- Lab 2.3 Build a Windows VM (Server 2022) - VirtIO SCSI/NIC with driver injection
- Lab 2.4 Template and clone: full vs linked clones, clean identity
- Lab 2.5 Monitoring and performance baseline with InfluxDB (opt)
Day 3 - Clustering and Shared Storage
Lecture modules
- M10 Clustering, Corosync and quorum (what a cluster shares, ring0/ring1, why three nodes)
- M11 Shared storage concepts and NFS (what the 'shared' flag really means)
- M12 iSCSI and shared LVM - the classic SAN pattern (multipath, FC/FCoE mapping, snapshots on shared LVM in PVE 9)
- M13 Ceph - hyper-converged storage (MON/MGR/OSD, replication, self-healing, dedicated networks)
- M14 Node certificates and ACME (Let's Encrypt workflow with an internal CA)
Hands-on labs
- Lab 3.1 Build the cluster on a dedicated Corosync network - observe quorum loss and recovery
- Lab 3.2 NFS shared storage: attach cluster-wide, move a live disk
- Lab 3.3 iSCSI and shared LVM with multipath and path failover
- Lab 3.4 Deploy Ceph: MONs, MGRs, OSDs, RBD pool on dedicated Ceph networks
- Lab 3.5 ACME node certificates from the pod CA (opt)
Day 4 - High Availability, Migration and vSphere Import
Lecture modules
- M15 Live migration and the migration network (what gets copied, secure vs insecure, with/without shared storage)
- M16 High availability, fencing and the Cluster Resource Scheduler (CRM/LRM, watchdog self-fencing, affinity rules, CRS = the PVE answer to DRS)
- M17 Importing VMs from VMware vSphere (built-in ESXi import, Linux vs Windows cleanup)
- M18 SDN - cluster-wide virtual networks (zone/VNet/subnet, VXLAN, EVPN outlook, NSX concept mapping)
- M19 The Proxmox VE firewall (three levels, security groups, the lockout pitfalls)
Hands-on labs
- Lab 4.1 Migration - live and offline, over a dedicated migration network
- Lab 4.2 High availability: force a node failure, watch the failover, affinity rules
- Lab 4.3 Import from VMware vSphere: one Linux and one Windows VM from the pod's ESXi host
- Lab 4.4 SDN: a VXLAN network across all nodes (opt)
- Lab 4.5 PVE firewall: datacenter, node and guest level without locking yourself out (opt)
Day 5 - Backup, Cloud-init and Automation
Lecture modules
- M20 Backup: vzdump and the Proxmox Backup Server (modes, jobs, dedup, retention, GC/verify, sync, ransomware protection)
- M21 Cloud-init: VMs that configure themselves
- M22 The API, tokens and Ansible (permission scoping, proxmoxer, playbooks)
- M23 Terraform/OpenTofu - the declarative twin (state, plan/apply, when to combine with Ansible)
- M24 Proxmox Datacenter Manager and where to go next (multi-cluster management, the vCenter question)
Hands-on labs
- Lab 5.1 Backup: vzdump first, then PBS - deduplication, full restore, single-file restore
- Lab 5.2 Cloud-init deploy: clones that boot fully configured
- Lab 5.3 Automate provisioning with Ansible and API tokens
- Lab 5.4 Terraform/OpenTofu provider (opt)
- Lab 5.5 Free-build challenge: combine the week's skills (opt)
- Lab 5.6 Proxmox Datacenter Manager: install, register your cluster (opt)