Running OPNsense as a VM inside Proxmox is one of the best decisions I made when building my homelab. You get a full-featured firewall with the added benefits of snapshots, easy backups, and no dedicated hardware required. The setup is a bit more involved than installing on bare metal — mostly because of how network interfaces need to be configured in Proxmox. But once you understand the network topology, it clicks quickly. ...
Proxmox is one of those tools that looks more intimidating than it is. The installation is straightforward, the web interface is clean, and within an hour of starting you can have your first virtual machine running. This guide walks through the full process from scratch. What you’ll need A machine to install Proxmox on (dedicated hardware or a repurposed PC) A USB drive (at least 2GB) for the installer A network connection (wired preferred for the install) A separate machine to access the web interface from Proxmox runs best on dedicated hardware — it’s a Type 1 hypervisor designed to be the only thing running on the machine. Don’t install it alongside another OS. ...