OpenMetal Proxmox Bare Metal Reference Architecture

Q: What Proxmox reference architecture does OpenMetal recommend for bare metal servers?

OpenMetal publishes a full Proxmox reference architecture for bare metal, developed with Wendell Wilson from Level1Techs, using a 3-node cluster on Large v4 servers with VLAN segmentation, ZFS replication, and HA routing.

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The reference architecture uses four Large v4 servers: three form the Proxmox cluster with VLAN segmentation across corosync, storage, VM, and management networks. ZFS storage pools handle local data with cross-node replication. A high-availability pfSense VM pair runs on the cluster for ingress and egress routing. The fourth Large v4 serves as a dedicated storage and replication target. Proxmox Backup Server runs offsite over VPN for disaster recovery, and Proxmox Datacenter Manager provides multi-site management across locations.

Ceph is also supported as an alternative to ZFS for hyper-converged deployments where distributed storage is preferred over local replication. Recommended server tiers for Proxmox are the Large v4, XL v4, and XXL v4, depending on VM density and storage requirements. The 20 Gbps LACP-bonded private mesh handles corosync heartbeats, storage replication, and live migration traffic. IPMI access on every node allows BIOS-level configuration and remote OS installation without physical data center access. The full architecture, video walkthrough, and technical guides are available at openmetal.io/l1t-proxmox-on-bare-metal/.