Proxmox Hypervisor Installation
Date: February 12, 2026 Hardware: ASUS ROG STRIX Z490-G Gaming WiFi Status: Complete
Objective
Convert a gaming PC into a headless Type 1 hypervisor running Proxmox VE, replacing Windows 10 entirely.
System Specs
| Component | Details |
|---|---|
| Hostname | lab |
| Management IP | 192.168.86.30:8006 |
| Storage | 1TB NVMe SSD |
| RAM | 16GB DDR4 (at time of install) |
| Filesystem | ext4 on LVM-Thin |
| Hypervisor | Proxmox VE 9.1 |
What Happened (The Real Story)
Attempt 1 Rufus
I started the way most guides suggest: burn the Proxmox ISO to a USB drive using Rufus. The ASUS ROG board consistently refused to recognize it. The drive wouldn’t appear in boot priority and the file structure was rejected by the UEFI.
I spent time adjusting Secure Boot settings and trying different USB ports before accepting that Rufus wasn’t going to work with this board.
Attempt 2 Ventoy
Switched to Ventoy. After loading the ISO, I noticed something odd Partition 1 failed, but Partition 2 acted as the handoff point the ASUS UEFI needed to pass control to the Proxmox installer. Once I selected the EFI partition specifically, it booted cleanly.
Lesson learned: On ASUS ROG boards, use Ventoy and explicitly select the EFI partition during boot selection. Keep this in mind for any future bare-metal installs on this hardware.
Installation Decisions
Filesystem: ext4 over ZFS
Proxmox offers ZFS during setup, which is appealing for its snapshot and data integrity features. I chose ext4 + LVM-Thin instead.
Why: ZFS caches aggressively in RAM. On a machine that would be running multiple VMs, dedicating RAM to a filesystem cache would directly reduce what’s available to guests. ext4 with LVM-Thin gives thin-provisioned storage without the memory overhead.
Network Configuration
The installer auto-detected the network environment and suggested 192.168.86.30. I confirmed this as a static assignment with a /24 subnet mask giving 254 usable addresses on the local network.
Result
Proxmox VE 9.1 installed and operational. Web UI accessible at 192.168.86.30:8006. Machine running headless no monitor, no keyboard, managed entirely through a browser from another device.