Riverbed CX-770s were never meant to be hypervisors, but who doesn’t love repurposing enterprise gear for homelab greatness? These boxes, built for WAN optimization and SteelFusion roles, have decent horsepower under the hood—and with a bit of elbow grease, they make solid nodes for a Proxmox VE Ceph cluster.

In this post, I’ll walk you through converting three CX-770s into a self-contained 3-node Proxmox Ceph cluster. It’s perfect for testing distributed storage, learning HA features, and flexing some homelab muscle.

Hardware Overview: Riverbed CX-770

Specs will vary slightly based on model/refresh, but here’s the general idea:

CPU: Intel Xeon (E3-1200v2 range – decent for Ceph)

RAM: Usually 32GB Non-ECC DDR3 (4x8G max configuration)

Storage:

2 internal 2.5" drive bays (SATA)

1x PCIe x8 slot (unusable unless you are willing to remove the motherboard from the chassis)

Network: Dual + quad gigabit NICs onboard (so 6 in total)

Installing Proxmox VE Over Serial Console on Riverbed CX-770

The Riverbed CX-770 appliances are headless, so installing Proxmox VE requires using the serial console. Fortunately, as of Proxmox VE 8.1, the installer natively supports serial output.

Requirements

Proxmox VE 8.1 ISO

USB stick flashed with the ISO (use Rufus or Balena Etcher)

Serial connection (typically via a USB-to-serial adapter)

Terminal emulator like screen, minicom, or PuTTY

Step 1: Prepare the USB Installer

Download the Proxmox VE 8.1 or newer ISO.

Use Rufus (Windows) or dd (Linux/macOS) to write the ISO to a USB stick.

Plug the USB stick into the CX-770.

Step 2: Connect Over Serial

  1. Identify the serial port (commonly /dev/ttyUSB0 or COM port on Windows).

  2. Use a terminal emulator to connect:

screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200

  1. Power on the CX-770 and interrupt the boot process to enter the BIOS or boot menu.

  2. Choose to boot from the USB stick.

Step 3: Install Proxmox

Proceed through the installer as normal via the serial console.

Configure the IP address, hostname, and root password.

After installation completes, remove the USB and reboot.