I thought i'd share what I've done to install Proxmox 7.4 on my Hetzner AX-102 server, hopefully it'll help others going through the same process.
I've done a Proxmox install on bare metal previously. The first two times, the instructions here worked well for me: https://community.hetzner.com/tutorials/proxmox-docker-zfs . These instructions involve booting in rescue mode, then starting a virtual machine and running the proxmox GUI installer through VNC. This usually works fine (with the exception that the network interfaces will be incorrect and you'll have to fix it manually).
This time with the 7950x3d server however, I ran into an issue. The server just wouldn't boot on proxmox. I couldn't tell what was happening, but the server was unreachable after rebooting off the rescue mode. When this happens, you can again launch the VM and inspect logs, and I could clearly tell it wouldn't even boot (the only boot times were when I would launch proxmox from the VM).
So the next thing I did was order a KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) connected to my server. Hetzner will do this for free, for a duration of 3 hours. You can order it by going to the robot, choose your server, support, Remote Console. Around an hour later, I had instructions on how to connect to the web interface showing the console for my server. This allows you to see the boot process, including accessing the BIOS.
Once I had this, I attempted a setup using the KVM's ISO image functionality using the proxmox 7.4 ISO. I highly recommend you DON'T do this, because the ISO will be streamed from the samba server during the install, and the whole process will be insanely slow. Instead, reply to the support email regarding KVM, and ask hetzner support staff to create a bootable USB from the proxmox ISO (give them the url). They will do this, and you'll have to go into the BIOS and enable the USB stick in the boot order. Once done, reboot, and the proxmox installer will launch.
That was not the end of my problems though. The GUI interface wouldn't come up, showing error "Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices" in terminal 2 (ctrl + alt + f2). Thankfully, a helpful person has written a workaround here: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/generic-solution-when-install-gets-framebuffer-mode-fails.111577/
Once I got that behind me, then the install finished. I configured the BIOS to boot from NVME and everything worked at this point.
Now, here's an important step, if you want to really benefit from the insane single core performance of the 7950x3d, you must set VM's CPU type to "host". If you keep the default "kvm64", the performance won't be as good according to geekbench6 (this is explained here https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html#qm_cpu)
That's it! Hopefully it helps someone. I've found hetzner support to be great !
I've done a Proxmox install on bare metal previously. The first two times, the instructions here worked well for me: https://community.hetzner.com/tutorials/proxmox-docker-zfs . These instructions involve booting in rescue mode, then starting a virtual machine and running the proxmox GUI installer through VNC. This usually works fine (with the exception that the network interfaces will be incorrect and you'll have to fix it manually).
This time with the 7950x3d server however, I ran into an issue. The server just wouldn't boot on proxmox. I couldn't tell what was happening, but the server was unreachable after rebooting off the rescue mode. When this happens, you can again launch the VM and inspect logs, and I could clearly tell it wouldn't even boot (the only boot times were when I would launch proxmox from the VM).
So the next thing I did was order a KVM (keyboard-video-mouse) connected to my server. Hetzner will do this for free, for a duration of 3 hours. You can order it by going to the robot, choose your server, support, Remote Console. Around an hour later, I had instructions on how to connect to the web interface showing the console for my server. This allows you to see the boot process, including accessing the BIOS.
Once I had this, I attempted a setup using the KVM's ISO image functionality using the proxmox 7.4 ISO. I highly recommend you DON'T do this, because the ISO will be streamed from the samba server during the install, and the whole process will be insanely slow. Instead, reply to the support email regarding KVM, and ask hetzner support staff to create a bootable USB from the proxmox ISO (give them the url). They will do this, and you'll have to go into the BIOS and enable the USB stick in the boot order. Once done, reboot, and the proxmox installer will launch.
That was not the end of my problems though. The GUI interface wouldn't come up, showing error "Cannot run in framebuffer mode. Please specify busIDs for all framebuffer devices" in terminal 2 (ctrl + alt + f2). Thankfully, a helpful person has written a workaround here: https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/generic-solution-when-install-gets-framebuffer-mode-fails.111577/
Once I got that behind me, then the install finished. I configured the BIOS to boot from NVME and everything worked at this point.
Now, here's an important step, if you want to really benefit from the insane single core performance of the 7950x3d, you must set VM's CPU type to "host". If you keep the default "kvm64", the performance won't be as good according to geekbench6 (this is explained here https://pve.proxmox.com/pve-docs/chapter-qm.html#qm_cpu)
That's it! Hopefully it helps someone. I've found hetzner support to be great !
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