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Proxmox VE Monitoring

Plugin: guides Module: proxmox

Overview​

This guide describes how Netdata monitors Proxmox VE hypervisors. Netdata provides comprehensive, zero-configuration monitoring of Proxmox hosts, including per-VM and per-container resource utilization, host system metrics, storage health, and cluster components.

When installed on a Proxmox host, Netdata automatically discovers and monitors all KVM/QEMU virtual machines and LXC containers through Linux cgroups, resolving friendly names for each VM and container.

Netdata uses multiple collectors working together to provide full Proxmox visibility:

  • cgroups.plugin monitors per-VM and per-container CPU, memory, disk I/O, and network via Linux cgroups. It automatically resolves VM names from /etc/pve/qemu-server/<VMID>.conf and container hostnames from /etc/pve/lxc/<CTID>.conf.
  • proc.plugin monitors host-level system metrics (CPU, memory, network interfaces, disk I/O).
  • apps.plugin monitors Proxmox-specific process groups (proxmox-ve, libvirt, qemu-guest-agent).
  • go.d/zfspool monitors ZFS pool health, space utilization, and fragmentation (ZFS is common on Proxmox).
  • go.d/ceph monitors Ceph cluster health and performance (for Proxmox clusters using Ceph storage).
  • go.d/smartctl monitors physical disk SMART health data.
  • go.d/sensors monitors hardware temperature, fan speed, and voltage.
  • ebpf.plugin provides kernel-level visibility into VM/container syscalls, file I/O, and network activity.

This collector is only supported on the following platforms:

  • Linux

This collector only supports collecting metrics from a single instance of this integration.

Proxmox VE Monitoring can be monitored further using the following other integrations:

Default Behavior​

Auto-Detection​

When Netdata is installed on a Proxmox VE host, it automatically detects and monitors:

  • All running KVM/QEMU virtual machines
  • All running LXC containers
  • Host system resources (CPU, memory, network, disks)
  • Systemd services (pveproxy, pvedaemon, pvestatd, corosync, etc.)
  • ZFS pools (if ZFS is used)

Limits​

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact​

The default configuration for this integration is not expected to impose a significant performance impact on the system.

Metrics​

This guide does not collect metrics directly. Metrics are collected by the related integrations listed above. See each integration's page for detailed metric documentation.

Alerts​

There are no alerts configured by default for this integration.

Setup​

Prerequisites​

Install Netdata on the Proxmox host​

Netdata must be installed directly on the Proxmox VE host (not inside a VM or container) to access cgroups for all VMs and containers.

wget -O /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh https://get.netdata.cloud/kickstart.sh && sh /tmp/netdata-kickstart.sh

Configuration​

Options​

There are no configuration options.

via File​

There is no configuration file.

Examples​

There are no configuration examples.

Troubleshooting​

VM or container names not resolved​

If VMs or containers show raw cgroup paths instead of friendly names, verify that:

  1. Netdata is installed on the Proxmox host (not inside a VM)
  2. The /etc/pve/ directory is accessible to the netdata user
  3. The cgroup-name.sh script can read VM/container configuration files

Missing ZFS metrics​

If ZFS pool metrics are not showing, ensure the zfspool collector is enabled and the zpool command is available to the netdata user.

Missing Ceph metrics​

Ceph metrics require the Ceph collector to be configured with the Ceph REST API endpoint. See the Ceph integration page for details.

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