User access to VMs

[SecurityGuy]

OK, this should be really simple and I thought it would be pretty obvious and intuitive, but I am going cross-eyed trying to get it to work or to find the answer:

I just set up my first PVE server. Runs smoothly, have Mint and Win7 test VMs running. The console access to the VMs works, but is a hassle, and I am ready to start testing direct browser access to individual VMs. What is the simplest, most reliable way to do this?

Thanks!

 

[m.ardito]

What is the simplest, most reliable way to do this?Thanks!

one great option is to set up remote desktop from inside the vm (eg: rdp, vnc, whatever).

if you mean only using pve consoles (java-vnc, spice), it's more complicated, you need to
1) ensure you user can access only "his" machines (best use pools/groups for that)
2) setup a script on your client to get, providing user credentials, a "ticket" from pve using API (eg: use curl+ scripting)
3) use that ticket to get remote access to the user's vm.

Marco

 

[SecurityGuy]

one great option is to set up remote desktop from inside the vm (eg: rdp, vnc, whatever).

if you mean only using pve consoles (java-vnc, spice), it's more complicated, you need to
1) ensure you user can access only "his" machines (best use pools/groups for that)
2) setup a script on your client to get, providing user credentials, a "ticket" from pve using API (eg: use curl+ scripting)
3) use that ticket to get remote access to the user's vm.

Marco

Oh ok, thank you Marco. I had a basic misconception then. I was under the impression ProxMox had provision for accessing the VMs directly via browser by, say, pointing the browser at the VM's local IP and port. I must have read a general comment somewhere referring to the PVE admin GUI and thought it was talking about VM access.

One other quick question then: is the Spice executable to be run on client machines an actual client interface, or does it just install drivers for accessing VMs via the Spice button in the PVE admin console?

 

[m.ardito]

I had a basic misconception then. I was under the impression ProxMox had provision for accessing the VMs directly via browser by, say, pointing the browser at the VM's local IP and port.

One other quick question then: is the Spice executable to be run on client machines an actual client interface, or does it just install drivers for accessing VMs via the Spice button in the PVE admin console?

Well, pve already has vnc access to kvm and openvz that runs "in the browser", via java, in a sense.

With spice, already present but which should replace java/vnc in the future in pve, you need a local client, atm (virt-viewer) see http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/SPICE

But who knows, in the far future, we could be using this, also: http://www.spice-space.org/page/Html5 (prototype Web client)

Marco