You have a bare-metal box and you want it to run virtual machines and containers instead of a single operating system. Proxmox VE turns that raw hardware into a full virtualisation platform: a Debian-based host with a web UI, KVM full virtualisation, LXC system containers, built-in storage and networking, and no per-socket hypervisor licence to buy. This guide walks the whole path from a blank server to a working host. We install Proxmox VE 9.2 from the ISO, fix the APT repositories and update, understand the default bridge networking, look at storage, build a first VM and a first LXC container, and finish with basic hardening. By the end you will have a production-ready single node you can grow into a cluster later.

Proxmox VE gives you two ways to slice a server: full virtual machines via KVM, and LXC system containers that share the host's kernel. The right choice per workload is usually clear once you know the three questions that decide it: isolation, kernel, and migration. This guide explains how each actually works, compares them on the dimensions that matter operationally, settles the Docker question with Proxmox's own current guidance, and ends with a decision table you can apply per service.