Let’s Prepare Our Laptop!

Thank you for joining me. Your particular process may vary depending on your hardware.

My Hardware (aka Old Faithful)

This was my constant companion over the past 4 years and has served me well. Its role has been recently replaced by a smaller laptop. However, it has sufficient horsepower that it would be a waste to just leave it gathering dust in a corner.

The specs:

  • MSI GS65 Stealth 9SD
  • Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-9750H
  • RAM 32.0 GB
  • KBG30ZM512G TOSHIBA
  • Samsung SSD 970 EVO Plus 1TB

Fast (mobile) i7, lots of RAM, and two SSDs totally 1.5 TB.

old faithful

Preparing the Laptop

These steps include:

  • Staging the Environment
  • Changing the Private IP Address Range
  • Creating a Bootable USB Drive
  • Enabling Virtualization in the BIOS
  • Boot from the USB Drive

DEVIATIONS FROM 0xBEN

  • Enter BIOS by pressing DEL

  • Virtualization was previously enabled, but double check both are enabled anyway

bios-virtual

  • Boot from the USB Drive
    • ensure can boot from USB drive
    • Re-prioritize boot order in UEFI Hard Disk Drive BBS Priorities
    • for the installation, make sure USB Drive is #1 (with Proxmox)
    • I have two SSDs - so make sure the desired bootable SSD is proritized

bios-boot

  • Create a bootable USB
    • Proxmox VE 7.4

usb-proxmox usb-etcher

Proxmox Installation Steps

These steps include:

  • boot the USB drive
  • Choose Install Proxmox VE
  • Disk Partitioning
  • Wrapping Up

DEVIATIONS FROM 0xBEN

Disk Partitioning

  • Set target target installation to 500 GB SSD
  • Do not bother partitioning at this point
  • 1 TB SSD will become lvn-thin to store VMs - see below

Wrapping Up

  • Hostname: lapprox.home.lab
  • IP Address: 192.168.1.175
  • Gateway: 192.168.1.1
  • DNS Server: 192.168.1.1

Success!

proxmox-success

Required Updates

These steps include:

  • Update the APT Repositories
  • Install Some Dependencies
  • If You’re Using a Laptop
  • Install Any Pending Upgrades
  • The Web Console

NO DEVIATIONS FROM 0xBEN

Changing the Software Networking

These steps include:

  • Converting to Open vSwitch
  • Make a Backup of the Current Network Configuration
  • Remove the Linux Bridge
  • Create the Open vSwitches
    • Create the Production Switch
    • Create the Management Interface
    • Create the pfSense Internal Switch
    • Create a VLAN for Internet-Facing Insecure VMs
    • Create a VLAN for Isolated Insecure VMs
  • Final Review

finalreview

DEVIATIONS FROM 0xBEN

Create the Management Interface

  • Remember our Private Internet Address is different from 0xBEN’s
  • Find the IP address for Proxmox - add MAC address and reserve IP address in router

mgmtinterface

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