Setting Up a Kubernetes Cluster on Proxmox for Free

Why Proxmox for Kubernetes?

Proxmox VE is a free, enterprise-grade hypervisor that runs on any x86 hardware. Running Proxmox as the base OS and creating VMs on top is a great way to build a real multi-node K8s cluster.

This setup gives you a real cluster for:

• CKA/CKAD exam practice
• Testing Helm charts and operators
• Learning without paying for EKS or GKE

Proxmox VE dashboard — 3 VMs running as Kubernetes nodes on one physical machine

Recommended Hardware

Any x86 machine with at least:

• 4+ CPU cores
• 16GB+ RAM (32GB recommended)
• 256GB+ SSD

Cost: ~$100–200 for a secondhand mini PC or workstation

Step 1 — Install Proxmox

Download Proxmox VE ISO from proxmox.com, flash to USB, install on your machine.

Access the web UI at: https://YOUR_IP:8006

Step 2 — Create VMs for the Cluster

Create 3 VMs:

Node	Role	CPU	RAM	Disk
k8s-master	Control Plane	2 vCPU	4GB	32GB
k8s-worker1	Worker	2 vCPU	6GB	32GB
k8s-worker2	Worker	2 vCPU	6GB	32GB

Use Ubuntu 22.04 LTS as the OS for all nodes.

Step 3 — Install kubeadm on All Nodes

Run on every node:

# Disable swap
swapoff -a
sed -i '/ swap / s/^\(.*\)$/#\1/g' /etc/fstab

# Install container runtime (containerd)
apt-get update
apt-get install -y containerd

# Install kubeadm, kubelet, kubectl
apt-get install -y apt-transport-https ca-certificates curl
curl -fsSL https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.29/deb/Release.key | gpg --dearmor -o /etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/keyrings/kubernetes-apt-keyring.gpg] https://pkgs.k8s.io/core:/stable:/v1.29/deb/ /' | tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/kubernetes.list
apt-get update
apt-get install -y kubelet kubeadm kubectl

Step 4 — Initialize the Control Plane

On the master node only:

kubeadm init --pod-network-cidr=10.244.0.0/16

Set up kubectl access:

mkdir -p $HOME/.kube
cp /etc/kubernetes/admin.conf $HOME/.kube/config

Step 5 — Install Flannel Network Plugin

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/flannel-io/flannel/releases/latest/download/kube-flannel.yml

Step 6 — Join Worker Nodes

Copy the join command from the kubeadm init output and run it on each worker:

kubeadm join MASTER_IP:6443 --token TOKEN --discovery-token-ca-cert-hash sha256:HASH

All nodes showing Ready status — the cluster is up and running

Step 7 — Verify the Cluster

kubectl get nodes

Expected output:

NAME          STATUS   ROLES           AGE   VERSION
k8s-master    Ready    control-plane   5m    v1.29.0
k8s-worker1   Ready    <none>          3m    v1.29.0
k8s-worker2   Ready    <none>          3m    v1.29.0

Your cluster is ready. Deploy a test app:

kubectl create deployment nginx --image=nginx
kubectl expose deployment nginx --port=80 --type=NodePort

What I Practice on This Cluster

• RBAC and namespace isolation
• Helm chart deployment and customization
• Ingress controllers (Nginx)
• Persistent volumes and storage classes
• Prometheus + Grafana monitoring stack
• Pod autoscaling (HPA)

Pods scaling up across the cluster — this is what Kubernetes is built for

Cost

Running this cluster costs me nothing extra — it runs on the same OptiPlex as my Ollama setup. Total electricity draw is under 80W for the whole machine.

If you are preparing for CKA or just want to learn Kubernetes properly, build this setup. A real cluster beats any simulator.