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:

• Proxmox VMs and Containers
• Systemd Services
• Applications
• ZFS Pools
• Ceph
• S.M.A.R.T.
• Linux Sensors
• Network interfaces
• Disk Statistics
• System statistics
• Memory Usage
• ZFS Adaptive Replacement Cache

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.

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.

Alerts

There are no alerts configured by default for this integration.

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.

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.