Proxmox Installation
This section documents the Proxmox VE hypervisor that powered the CCNA lab. The design prioritizes performance-per-watt on small-form-factor hardware.
Philosophy: The HP t740 thin client was selected as the primary node for its efficiency and nested virtualization support (EVE-NG).
Hardware Inventory
Section titled “Hardware Inventory”| Node | Specs | Role |
|---|---|---|
| HP t740 Thin Client | AMD Ryzen Embedded V1756B (4C/8T), 16 GB DDR4, 512 GB NVMe | Compute node |
| MacBook Pro | — | Management console — CLI, diagramming, code |
See Hardware Specs for switch and NIC details.
Software Stack
Section titled “Software Stack”- Hypervisor: Proxmox VE (Debian-based)
- Virtualization: KVM / QEMU with nested virtualization for EVE-NG
- Containers: LXC (native) and Docker (planned stacks for Phase 2)
- Tailscale (LXC): encrypted remote access to the lab over a WireGuard mesh (Tailnet)
Resource Allocation
Section titled “Resource Allocation”| Service | vCPU | RAM | Storage | Role |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| EVE-NG | 4 | 8 GB | 50 GB | Network emulation — see EVE-NG |
| Tailscale | 1 | 512 MB | 8 GB | Mesh VPN — encrypted remote access (Tailnet) |
| Reserved | 3 | 7 GB | 20 GB | Growth capacity |