Setting Up Proxmox VE on Hetzner Root Servers (on Debian 13)
A step-by-step guide to deploying a production-ready Proxmox VE 9.1 node on a Hetzner dedicated root server, starting from a clean Debian 13 (Trixie) base installation. Covers OS setup via Hetzner's rescue system and installimage, Proxmox VE installation, network bridge configuration, UFW and fail2ban security hardening, community post-install scripts, and host-level performance optimizations including CPU governor, I/O scheduler, IOMMU, and sysctl tuning.
Assumptions & Debian 13 Setup
Assumptions This guide walks you through deploying a production-ready Proxmox VE 9.1 installation...
Installing Proxmox VE
Overview This chapter installs Proxmox VE 9.1 on top of the Debian 13 system set up in the previo...
Configuring the Network Bridge
Diagram
Security Hardening
Overview This chapter locks down the two main attack surfaces on a public-facing Proxmox host: th...
Proxmox Helper Scripts
Overview The Proxmox VE Community Scripts project maintains a collection of open-source helper sc...
Further Optimization
Overview This chapter applies a set of low-level host optimisations that improve performance, sta...
Why we build it this way
This guide installs Proxmox by hand on a clean Debian base, on a bare-metal dedicated server. A f...
Lessons learned & gotchas
The things that bite, collected so they bite you less: Use the rescue system + installimage; don...