What zone9 is
zone9 gives your users the experience they expect from a public cloud — create a server, attach a public address, define firewall rules, build isolated private networks, run a Kubernetes cluster, get an S3 endpoint — on top of Proxmox VE infrastructure you own and operate.
It is deliberately not a cloud platform of its own. It is a thin layer that translates what a user asks for into primitives Proxmox already has: pools, VMs, SDN zones and VNets, firewall rules, replication jobs. Everything else — object storage, load balancing, Kubernetes — is built from ordinary virtual machines running ordinary open-source software, described in full on each product page.
The one property everything else follows from
Section titled “The one property everything else follows from”If zone9 is switched off, your infrastructure keeps running.
That is not a marketing line; it is a constraint the codebase is held to. No virtual machine phones home to the panel to keep working. No network path depends on the control plane being reachable. A load balancer that cannot reach the panel keeps balancing traffic with the last configuration it received. A Kubernetes cluster does not know the panel exists.
Three consequences, all of which you can verify yourself:
Any Proxmox operator can take over. Every relationship the panel knows about is
written into Proxmox in human-readable form — pool membership, tags, VM notes, VNet
names. There is no hidden table whose loss would strand your machines. If you open the
Proxmox web UI and look at a VM zone9 created, you can tell whose it is and what it is
for, using nothing but the standard tools: qm, pvesh, the PVE web interface, ip,
zfs, ceph.
Leaving is a supported operation, not an escape. Your VMs are Proxmox VMs. Your disks are Proxmox disks. Deleting zone9 leaves them exactly where they are.
The panel is never the source of truth about infrastructure. It reads the truth from Proxmox and reconciles. See Intent, truth and reconciliation — it is the single most important idea in the system.
What it manages, and what it does not
Section titled “What it manages, and what it does not”| zone9 manages | zone9 does not manage |
|---|---|
| Pools, VMs, disks, snapshots | Proxmox cluster configuration, node setup |
| SDN zones, VNets, subnets, IP allocation | Physical switches, VLAN trunks, cabling |
| Per-VM firewall rules | The edge router’s own policy and routing |
| Public address allocation and attachment | The upstream announcement of your IP block |
| Machine images (templates) | The hypervisor’s storage backend |
The right-hand column is provisioned once with configuration management (Ansible or your equivalent) and left alone. This is a deliberate line: a control plane that also reconfigures switches and hypervisor nodes is a control plane whose failure takes the datacentre with it.
What exists today
Section titled “What exists today”- Servers. Create, resize, power, delete from image templates. Linux and Windows. Deletion is two-phase with a buffer, so a mistaken click is recoverable.
- Private networks. A private network is an isolated L3 domain. Inside it you create typed subnets — application, data, management — and the type decides whether that subnet can reach the internet at all.
- Public IPs. Routed, not NAT-ed. The address is configured on the VM itself; the edge forwards the block and does not translate it. The server sees its own public address, which means protocols that embed addresses simply work.
- Firewalls. Rule sets attached to servers, scoped to the public interface so that private-network neighbours are never blocked by an internet-facing policy.
- Gateway. One appliance gives selected subnets outbound internet from your public address, and can optionally join a Zero Trust network.
- Load balancer. TCP and HTTPS, host-based routing, health checks, live counters, and TLS certificates the panel obtains and renews.
- Kubernetes. Managed clusters on Talos Linux. You get a kubeconfig and a browser
kubectlconsole; the control plane machines are not yours to babysit. - Object storage. S3-compatible storage on Garage, single- or multi-node, reachable privately or published through the load balancer.
- Domains and DNS. Register or adopt a domain, host its DNS, and bind records to a load balancer in one click.
- Console. Serial and VNC access through the panel, without exposing the hypervisor.
Who it is for
Section titled “Who it is for”Three audiences, and the documentation is organised for all three:
- Users of a zone9 installation — start at Core concepts, then Your first server, then the Guides.
- Operators running zone9 on their own Proxmox — start at Self-hosting.
- Automation and LLM agents — start at Reading order for agents, then the REST API and MCP server.