Adding SMB storage to Windows Proxmox helps you expand the storage capacity of your virtualization system flexibly and economically. By connecting Proxmox to an SMB shared folder on Windows, you can take advantage of available hard drive space to store ISOs, backups, or virtual machine data. This article will guide you step by step to configure SMB shares on Windows 10/11 and add them to Proxmox VE. In addition, you will also learn how to assign access rights, check connections, and handle common errors when mounting SMB. This solution is very suitable for homelab users or small businesses that want to optimize their storage infrastructure. The implementation process does not require installing additional plugins, just a few operations in the Proxmox web interface. Once completed, you can easily manage and backup virtual machines through SMB storage. This is a simple, effective, and safe way to expand the capacity of Proxmox VE.

Step 1: Check if Windows has enabled SMB

Run this command in PowerShell (admin):

Get-SmbServerConfiguration | Select EnableSMB2Protocol
→ If the result is True → OK
If it is False → enable it again with the command:

Set-SmbServerCnableSMBonfiguration -E2Protocol $true

Step 2: Create Share folder

Win10/11 machine creates Share folder
Disable inheritance of separate user setup for this folder.

Setup for full-right Administrator user
or you can create a user and set full permissions for this user

Step 3: Turn off Firewall

Step 4: Add SMB Storage

Can be added directly on GUI

pve: 192.168.11.247
share folder: 192.168.11.5

Or
From the Shell interface, run the command
pvesm add cifs SMB -server 192.168.11.5 -share share -smbversion 3.0 -username hp -password Abc#1234

In which
• SMB: name for this Storage
• 192.168.11.5: IP address of the machine containing the shared folder
• share: name of the shared folder
• administrator: user to access the SMB server. No need to .\
• Abc#1234: password of the administrator user

Add more file types contained in this storage.

Step 5: Demo backup to SMB storage

Run VM backup to this Storage to check