You have a bare-metal box and you want it to run virtual machines and containers instead of a single operating system. Proxmox VE turns that raw hardware into a full virtualisation platform: a Debian-based host with a web UI, KVM full virtualisation, LXC system containers, built-in storage and networking, and no per-socket hypervisor licence to buy. This guide walks the whole path from a blank server to a working host. We install Proxmox VE 9.2 from the ISO, fix the APT repositories and update, understand the default bridge networking, look at storage, build a first VM and a first LXC container, and finish with basic hardening. By the end you will have a production-ready single node you can grow into a cluster later.