New to Proxmox and OpenVZ

[atjensen11]

Hello,

I recently came across Proxmox. After installing it and poking around a bit with the interface, I had a few questions.

As a side note, I did browse through all 19 pages of the Forum and read many articles. This answered one of my questions already regarding the use of software RAID.

I run my own servers for normal web hosting stuff primarily using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I plan on virtualizing only Linux machines right now and don't foresee using the KVM technology included in Proxmox. Currently, my servers are physical servers and I have been examining virtualization. I had a test rig setup with XEN and a few test virtual machines. With XEN, I came across a couple of things that made it seem very challenging to use it for my full production.

First, I had a tough time fowarding or passing through a USB device from the host machine to a virtual machine. It was easy to do with a USB disk device such as an external hard drive. Anything else though proved to be a challenge. Sometimes I could get the USB device to display under the /dev folder. Even when it appeared, the device did not work correctly. How does Proxmox handle the forwarding of USB devices to virtual machines in a non-KVM environment?

Second, I admit my understanding of virtual network devices is limited. It is a new concept to me. In XEN, I was much more comfortable hiding physical NICs from the host machine and passing them through to the virtual machine. Is a similar approach available in Proxmox or the underlying technology? Is there a better approach (bridging or venet) that would be more suitable? If it matters, I plan on having virtual machines on three different subnets (192.168.100.X, 192.168.20.X, & 192.168.3.X) and have 5 NICs installed in the machine.

I had believed my test rig was capable of hardware virtualization. It has Intel Xeon processors. Upon installing Proxmox and creating a new virtual machine, the interface says that my machine is not capable of hardware virtualization. Is there somewhere I can look to further verify if my machine can do hardware virtualization with Proxmox?

I really do like what I have seen from the Proxmox server so far.

Thanks.

 

[tom]

Hello,

I recently came across Proxmox. After installing it and poking around a bit with the interface, I had a few questions.

As a side note, I did browse through all 19 pages of the Forum and read many articles. This answered one of my questions already regarding the use of software RAID.

I run my own servers for normal web hosting stuff primarily using Ubuntu 8.04 LTS. I plan on virtualizing only Linux machines right now and don't foresee using the KVM technology included in Proxmox. Currently, my servers are physical servers and I have been examining virtualization. I had a test rig setup with XEN and a few test virtual machines. With XEN, I came across a couple of things that made it seem very challenging to use it for my full production.

First, I had a tough time fowarding or passing through a USB device from the host machine to a virtual machine. It was easy to do with a USB disk device such as an external hard drive. Anything else though proved to be a challenge. Sometimes I could get the USB device to display under the /dev folder. Even when it appeared, the device did not work correctly. How does Proxmox handle the forwarding of USB devices to virtual machines in a non-KVM environment?

Second, I admit my understanding of virtual network devices is limited. It is a new concept to me. In XEN, I was much more comfortable hiding physical NICs from the host machine and passing them through to the virtual machine. Is a similar approach available in Proxmox or the underlying technology? Is there a better approach (bridging or venet) that would be more suitable? If it matters, I plan on having virtual machines on three different subnets (192.168.100.X, 192.168.20.X, & 192.168.3.X) and have 5 NICs installed in the machine.

I had believed my test rig was capable of hardware virtualization. It has Intel Xeon processors. Upon installing Proxmox and creating a new virtual machine, the interface says that my machine is not capable of hardware virtualization. Is there somewhere I can look to further verify if my machine can do hardware virtualization with Proxmox?

I really do like what I have seen from the Proxmox server so far.

Thanks.

just to answer the last question: if your CPU´s (Intel) supports VT, you also need a motherboard supporting VT and you need to enable it in the bios. after you enabled it, you need to turn off (unplug) your server once. if this not helps, look for a newer bios.

see also the KVM wiki pages.

 

[dietmar]

How does Proxmox handle the forwarding of USB devices to virtual machines in a non-KVM environment?

What kind of USB device? For hardisks, you can simply allow OpenVZ containers to access the device.

...virtual machine. Is a similar approach available in Proxmox or the underlying technology? Is there a better approach (bridging or venet) that would be more suitable?

You can use bridging and venet (I don't really understand your question).

- Dietmar

 

[atjensen11]

just to answer the last question: if your CPU´s (Intel) supports VT, you also need a motherboard supporting VT and you need to enable it in the bios. after you enabled it, you need to turn off (unplug) your server once. if this not helps, look for a newer bios.

see also the KVM wiki pages.

I had looked through the BIOS already, but did not see a setting. The machine is a Dell so I visited their web site. They do have a newer version of the BIOS. The BIOS download are available in a Linux format (BIN file) and a Windows/MS-DOS format. I downloaded the Linux format and ran it according to Dell's instructions and received an error right away.

So it appears that I will stick with my current version of BIOS right now. If I understand virtualization correctly, virtualizing Windows requires Hardware Virtualization which is what the KVM technology provides. At this time, virtualizing Linux machines is a much higher priority for me.

 

[atjensen11]

What kind of USB device? For hardisks, you can simply allow OpenVZ containers to access the device.



You can use bridging and venet (I don't really understand your question).

- Dietmar

My background is from Xen. In that environment, I had a good understanding of passing hard disks connected to the HN via USB to a VM. I have read some How To's on the OpenVZ Wiki and it appears the format is very similar in OpenVZ. The thing I never was able to figure out in Xen was how to pass a printer connected to the HN via USB to a VM. Is it possible to accomplish this within the Proxmox environment for a Linux machine? My ideal configuration is to create a VM, install Samba and CUPS on it, pass the USB printer from the HN to the VM, and access the printer on my network.

This brings me to my question about veth and venet. My ideal configuration is to create a HN with an address in the 192.168.10.X subnet. VM's that are running on the HN could have addresses in either 192.168.10.X and 192.168.20.X. I have five NIC's in the machine right now. Frankly, I am not sure if I should proceed in my initial setup with veth or venet. I have two routers, one serving each of these subnets. I want some security on the HN so that machines on different subnets can't communicate each other by bypassing the router.

In my very limited knowledge of the virtual networking, this leads me to believe that I want to use veth. But the comparison on the OpenVZ sites seems to imply that there are other security concerns with this approach and that traffic sniffing can occur which concerns me.

Can someone help clarify which direction I should head in regards to networking options?

 

[dietmar]

The thing I never was able to figure out in Xen was how to pass a printer connected to the HN via USB to a VM. Is it possible to accomplish this within the Proxmox environment for a Linux machine? My ideal configuration is to create a VM, install Samba and CUPS on it, pass the USB printer from the HN to the VM, and access the printer on my network.

see http://wiki.openvz.org/USB_Printing_in_VE

I have five NIC's in the machine right now. Frankly, I am not sure if I should proceed in my initial setup with veth or venet. I have two routers, one serving each of these subnets. I want some security on the HN so that machines on different subnets can't communicate each other by bypassing the router.

In general, venet is more secure. But we have not firewall on the HW node, so you can't restrict traffic. Use 2 HN and a FW between them instead.

In my very limited knowledge of the virtual networking, this leads me to believe that I want to use veth. But the comparison on the OpenVZ sites seems to imply that there are other security concerns with this approach and that traffic sniffing can occur which concerns me.

Yes, with veth one can do traffic sniffing.