Proxmox VE admin spec

Proxmox VE’s pve-manager is the right comparison shape for Coppice’s operator surface because it makes the same trade we make: one browser-only console, no client install, a single tree on the left and a tabbed workbench on the right. Everything else — guests, storage, networking, snapshots, consoles, tasks, auth, cluster state — is a tab, not a different application. This page is the descriptive spec of that surface; the row-by-row Coppice parity map at /appendix/proxmox-comparison reads against it.

Screenshots below are linked from pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/ and mirrored under /proxmox/. They are taken from the current Proxmox VE Administration Guide (PVE 9.x) and from the matching wiki chapters; per-image source URLs sit in each <figcaption>. The intent is descriptive, not visual fidelity — Coppice’s /admin does not have to look like Proxmox to behave like Proxmox.

Login and shell

The first thing the operator sees is a small modal with username, password, realm picker, and language. Realms are Proxmox’s pluggable auth backends — pam, pve (built-in), ldap, ad, openid. Selecting a realm changes which directory the credentials hit; everything after login is the same shell.

The shell after login is four regions: a fixed top header, a left resource tree, the main workbench in the centre/right, and a bottom status panel that the operator can collapse. Every region is the same on every page; what changes is what the workbench renders for the selected resource.

Top chrome

The header bar is fixed. Reading left to right:

Resource tree (left)

The tree is the operator’s spatial map of the cluster. Top of the tree is always Datacenter. Below it sit nodes; below each node sit guests, storage entries that exist on that node, and local resources. Templates appear as italicized guest rows. SDN and Pools are nominally datacenter-scoped, but they are reachable as their own subtrees too.

The same inventory can be regrouped by:

• Server view — Datacenter → node → guests/storage on that node. The default.
• Folder view — Datacenter → all-of-type → entries. Useful when you operate by guest, not by node.
• Storage view — Datacenter → storage → backing guests. Used for “where do my disks actually live.”
• Pool view — Datacenter → pool → members. Used when permissions are assigned at the pool level.
• Tag view — Datacenter → tag → tagged guests.

A small filter input above the tree narrows visible rows by name, ID, or tag. The tree is virtualised so a 5,000-guest cluster is fine.

Datacenter view

Selecting Datacenter loads a tab strip across the top of the workbench. Each tab below is a distinct page; the strip is what makes Proxmox’s surface feel tabbed.

Node view

Selecting a node loads a node-scoped tab strip. The tabs are the host operator’s view: hardware, OS state, services, packages, certs, time, DNS, syslog, plus per-node analogues of the cluster-wide tabs.

Guest views (VM and CT)

Guest tabs are the densest part of the surface. A VM (qemu) and a CT (LXC) share most tabs; the differences are noted inline.

Tabs

Hardware tab field detail

Worth listing because Coppice’s Hardware tab maps row-for-row.

Lifecycle controls

Above the tab strip, the toolbar carries the lifecycle controls. The exact button set is:

Create-VM wizard

The Create-VM wizard is the canonical multi-step Proxmox dialog. Its shape — left rail of step labels, body that swaps content, Next / Back / Confirm at the bottom — is the template every other “Create X” dialog uses (Create CT, Create Backup Job, Create Realm).

Storage view

A storage entry in the tree is selected to inspect a backend’s contents. The tabs vary slightly with the backend’s allowed content types but the shape is consistent.

Pool view

SDN view

The SDN view is the modern PVE network fabric editor, layered over Linux bridges / OVS / VXLAN / EVPN / FRR. Datacenter → SDN has six subtabs.

After every SDN edit a banner reminds the operator to hit Apply; SDN config is staged in /etc/pve/sdn/ and applied to /etc/network/interfaces.d/ on demand.

Permissions view

The permissions model is path + role + subject:

• Paths are the resource hierarchy (/, /vms/<vmid>, /storage/<name>, /pool/<name>, /sdn/zones/<zone>/<vnet>, /access/<realm>).
• Roles bundle privileges. PVE ships Administrator, PVEAdmin, PVEAuditor, PVEDatastoreAdmin, PVEPoolUser, PVESDNAdmin, PVETemplateUser, PVEVMUser, etc., plus user-defined roles.
• Subjects are users, groups, or API tokens, in any realm.
• ACL entries are (path, subject, role, propagate?).

This is the model Coppice’s permissions workbench reads against. “Pool” double-purposes as both a resource grouping and an ACL container.

Bottom panel

Always present, collapsible. Two tabs.

• Tasks — recent API tasks across the cluster (or filtered to “my tasks”). Per-row: status pill (running / OK / warnings / error), description, target, user, start time, duration. Click to open a modal that streams the task’s stdout/stderr in real time and lets the operator stop it.
• Cluster log — the cluster-level event log, separate from systemd journal: pmxcfs / pveproxy / pve-cluster events, ACL changes, login attempts.

The task panel is the most copied piece of Proxmox UX. Coppice’s /admin task explorer is a direct echo: a flat list of gateway tasks, click-through detail, live updates. The PVE shape adds a stop button that actually severs the in-flight job — Coppice has that as a backend gap.

Cross-cutting affordances

• Bulk actions — multi-select on the guest grid enables Bulk Start / Stop / Migrate / Snapshot. Only as many options as are valid for the union of selected types.
• Search — the header search is global; each tab’s grid also has a per-column filter row.
• Right-click on a tree node mirrors the guest toolbar’s More menu.
• Keyboard — limited. Esc closes dialogs, arrow-keys navigate trees and tab strips. There is no command palette in the Sublime/VS Code sense.
• Help drawer — every dialog has a ? button that opens the matching admin-guide section in a side panel (still HTML, not contextual hints).
• Tags — first-class. Attached to guests, settable per-row, settable in bulk, used as a tree-grouping axis, used as filter input across grids.

Visual / UX notes

• Palette. Proxmox orange #E57000 for primary action highlights and the brand mark; otherwise mostly white cards on a light-grey app background, with state colour from status pills (green / yellow / red / grey).
• Density. Compact. Eight-row visible grids on a laptop screen. Single-line cell padding. The tree font is proportional, not monospace.
• Iconography. Font Awesome v4 / v5; type icons in the tree (server, cube, hard-drive, network), action icons on toolbars.
• Shape. “Everything is a tree on the left and tabs on the right.” Modal dialogs for object creation, in-place edit for object configuration, no full-page subforms. Apply staged-then-apply pattern only for SDN.
• Theme. Default is light; v8.x added a dark theme toggle in My Settings.

Coppice’s /admin trades the light theme for the editorial-dark-monograph palette of the rest of the site, but the structural pattern — tree, tabs, bottom task panel, right-click that mirrors the toolbar — is the one to keep.

Further reading

• Proxmox VE Administration Guide (canonical, current)
• Proxmox wiki — Graphical User Interface chapter
• Proxmox wiki — SDN
• User Management chapter (realms, roles, ACLs, TFA)
• /appendix/proxmox-comparison — the Coppice parity map keyed against this spec.