DRAFT: Proxmox VE in a Container

This is an unofficial compilation of Proxmox VE
to run it in a container for AMD64 and ARM64.

This seems crazy to run the whole virtualization framework in a container,
but suprisingly it works pretty well. It allows to isolate all dependencies
of PVE in a quite big self-sufficient containers.

It can run both LXC (privileged-only) and QEMU-based machines
with managing networking interfaces and accessing underlying disks
in a form of a files or partitions.

I would not advise to run it in a production, more like a preview.
It might be insecure with some usage patterns.

This is built using git repositories found on https://git.proxmox.com/ with minimal
amount of patches to compile in a container, or for ARM64.
You can find all patches in repos/patches folder.

Buy me a Coffee

If you found it useful :)

Common problems

To run LXC, you need to disable apparmor. Add GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="quiet apparmor=0" to /etc/default/grub and update-grub.
It is best to run network_mode: host, and create br0 with the network interface. Then add the br0 via Proxmox VE GUI to configuration.
It is requried to use extra_hosts: [pve:LOCAL_IP]. Otherwise container will not start.

Pre-built images

For starting quickly all images are precompiled and hosted
at https://hub.docker.com/r/ayufan/proxmox-ve.

Or:

# Latest stable / release tag
docker pull ayufan/proxmox-ve:latest

# Latest pre-release / beta tag
docker pull ayufan/proxmox-ve:beta

Each GitHub Releases includes the following binary assets:

proxmox-ve-server-*.tgz - contains all archived debian installation files with the ./install script

Run

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ayufan/pve-ve-dockerfiles/refs/heads/master/docker-compose.yml
docker-compose up -d

Run beta variant:

wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ayufan/pve-ve-dockerfiles/refs/heads/master/docker-compose.yml
TAG=beta docker-compose up -d

See the example docker-compose.yml.

Configure container

Create a new file (or merge with existing): docker-compose.override.yml:

services:
  pve:
    environment:
      TZ: Europe/Warsaw
    extra_hosts:
      - pve:192.168.10.1 # or whatever is your LAN IP

volumes:
  # persist configuration files
  cfg_persist:
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: ''
      o: bind
      device: /srv/pbs/persist

  # persist /var/lib/vz (default space to store disk images and containers)
  data_vz: 
    driver: local
    driver_opts:
      type: ''
      o: bind
      device: /srv/pbs/vz

Configure root password

docker-compose exec pve passwd

Then login to https://<ip>:8006/ with root / your password.

Features

I tested limited amount of features:

Running QEMU VMs on ARM64, including MikroTik on Ampere.
Running LXC containers on ARM64 in privileged mode, the unprivileged fails.

Install server on bare-metal or virtualized host

Docker is convienient, but in some cases it might be simply better to install natively.

You can pull compiled *.deb files from GitHub Releases.

Replace the v7.4.0 with the latest version.

wget https://github.com/ayufan/pve-ve-dockerfiles/releases/download/v4.0.12/proxmox-ve-v7.4.0-$(dpkg --print-architecture).tgz
tar zxf proxmox-ve-server-*.tgz
proxmox-ve-server-*/install

Changelog

See Releases.

Author

This is just built by Kamil Trzciński, 2025.
from the sources found on http://git.proxmox.com/.

ayufan/pve-ve-dockerfiles