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Mastering Proxmox. - Second Edition

Chapter 1. Understanding Proxmox VE and Advanced Installation

Virtualization, as we all know today, is a decades old technology that was first implemented in mainframes of the 1960s. Virtualization was a way to logically divide the mainframe's resources for different application processing. With the rise in energy costs, running under-utilized server hardware is no longer a luxury. Virtualization enables us to do more with less, thus save energy and money while creating a virtual green data center without geographical boundaries.

A hypervisor is a piece of software, hardware, or firmware that creates and manages virtual machines. It is the underlying platform or foundation that allows a virtual world to be built upon. In a way, it is the very building block of all virtualization. A bare metal hypervisor acts as a bridge between physical hardware and the virtual machines by creating an abstraction layer. Because of this unique feature, an entire virtual machine can be moved over a vast distance over the Internet and be made able to function exactly the same. A virtual machine does not see the hardware directly; instead, it sees the layer of the hypervisor, which is the same no matter on what hardware the hypervisor has been installed.

The Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is a cluster-based hypervisor and one of the best kept secrets in the virtualization world. The reason is simple. It allows you to build an enterprise business-class virtual infrastructure at a small business-class price tag without sacrificing stability, performance, and ease of use. Whether it is a massive data center to serve millions of people, or a small educational institution, or a home serving important family members, Proxmox can handle configuration to suit any situation.

If you have picked up this book, no doubt you will be familiar with virtualization and perhaps well versed with other hypervisors, such VMWare, Xen, Hyper-V, and so on. In this chapter and upcoming chapters, we will see the mighty power of Proxmox from the inside out. We will examine scenarios and create a complex virtual environment. We will tackle some heavy day-to-day issues and show resolutions, which might just save the day in a production environment. So, strap yourself in and let's dive into the virtual world with the mighty hypervisor, Proxmox VE.

Understanding Proxmox features

Before we dive in, it is necessary to understand why one should choose Proxmox over the other main stream hypervisors. Proxmox is not perfect but stands out among other contenders with some hard-to-beat features. The following are some of the features that makes Proxmox a real game changer.

It is free!

Yes, Proxmox is free! To be more accurate, Proxmox has several subscription levels among which the community edition is completely free. One can simply download Proxmox ISO at no cost and raise a fully functional cluster without missing a single feature and without paying anything. The main difference between the paid and community subscription level is that the paid subscription receives updates, which goes through additional testing and refinement. If you are running a production cluster with a real workload, it is highly recommended that you purchase support and licensing from Proxmox or Proxmox resellers.

Built-in firewall

Proxmox VE comes with a robust firewall ready to be configured out of the box. This firewall can be configured to protect the entire Proxmox cluster down to a virtual machine. The Per VM firewall option gives you the ability to configure each VM individually by creating individualized firewall rules, a prominent feature in a multi-tenant virtual environment. We will learn about this feature in detail in Chapter 8, The Proxmox Firewall.

Open vSwitch

Licensed under the Apache 2.0 license, Open vSwitch is a virtual switch designed to work in a multi-server virtual environment. All hypervisors need a bridge between VMs and the outside network. Open vSwitch enhances features of the standard Linux bridge in an ever-changing virtual environment. Proxmox fully supports Open vSwitch, which allows you to create an intricate virtual environment all the while, reducing virtual network management overhead. For details on Open vSwitch, refer to http://openvswitch.org/.

We will learn about Open vSwitch management in Proxmox in Chapter 7, Network of Virtual Networks.

The graphical user interface

Proxmox comes with a fully functional graphical user interface, or GUI, out of the box. The GUI allows an administrator to manage and configure almost all the aspects of a Proxmox cluster. The GUI has been designed keeping simplicity in mind with functions and features separated into menus for easier navigation. The following screenshot shows an example of the Proxmox GUI dashboard:

We will dissect the Proxmox GUI dashboard in Chapter 2, Exploring the Proxmox GUI.

KVM

KVM or Kernel-based virtual machine is a kernel module that is added to Linux for full virtualization to create isolated fully independent virtual machines. KVM VMs are not dependent on the host operating system in any way, but they do require the virtualization feature in BIOS to be enabled. KVM allows a wide variety of operating systems for virtual machines, such as Linux and Windows. Proxmox provides a very stable environment for KVM-based VMs. We will learn how to create KVM VMs and also how to manage them in Chapter 5, KVM Virtual Machines.

Linux containers or LXC

Introduced recently in Proxmox VE 4.0, Linux containers allow multiple Linux instances on the same Linux host. All the containers are dependent on the host Linux operating system and only Linux flavors can be virtualized as containers. There are no containers for the Windows operating system. LXC replace prior OpenVZ containers, which were the primary containers in the virtualization method in the previous Proxmox versions. If you are not familiar with LXC, and for details on LXC, refer to https://linuxcontainers.org/.

We will learn how to create LXC containers and manage them in Chapter 6, LXC Virtual Machines.

Storage plugins

Out of the box, Proxmox VE supports a variety of storage systems to store virtual disk images, ISO templates, backups, and so on. All plug-ins are quite stable and work great with Proxmox. Being able to choose different storage systems gives an administrator the flexibility to leverage the existing storage in the network. As of Proxmox VE 4.0, the following storage plugins are supported:

The local directory mount points
iSCSI
LVM Group
NFS Share
GlusterFS
Ceph RBD
ZFS

We will learn the usage of different storage systems and the types of file they can store in detail in Chapter 4, Storage Systems.

Vibrant culture

Proxmox has a growing community of users who are always helping others to learn Proxmox and troubleshoot various issues. With so many active users around the world and through active participation of Proxmox developers, the community has now become a culture of its own. Feature requests are continuously being worked on, and the existing features are being strengthened on a regular basis. With so many users supporting Proxmox, it is here to stay.

The advanced installation option

Although the basic installation works in all scenarios, there may be times when the advanced installation option may be necessary. Only the advanced installation option provides you the ability to customize the main OS drive.

A common practice for the operating system drive is to use a mirror RAID array using a controller interface. This provides drive redundancy if one of the drives fails. This same level of redundancy can also be achieved using a software-based RAID array, such as ZFS. Proxmox now offers options to select ZFS-based arrays for the operating system drive right at the beginning of the installation. For details on ZFS, if you are not familiar with it, refer to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ZFS.

Note

It is a common question to ask why one should choose ZFS software-based RAID over tried and tested hardware-based RAID. The simple answer is flexibility. A hardware-based RAID is locked or fully dependent on the hardware RAID controller interface that created the array, whereas a ZFS software-based RAID is not dependent on any hardware, and the array can easily be ported to different hardware nodes. Should a RAID controller failure occur, the entire array created from that controller is lost unless there is an identical controller interface available for replacement. The ZFS array is only lost when all the drives or maximum tolerable number of drives are lost in the array.

Besides ZFS, we can also select other filesystem types, such as ext3, ext4, or xfs, from the same advanced option. We can also set the custom disk or partition sizes through the advanced option. The following screenshot shows the installation interface with the Target Harddisk selection page:

Click on Options, as shown in the preceding screenshot, to open the advanced option for the Hard disk. The following screenshot shows the options window after clicking on the Options button:

In the preceding screenshot, we selected ZFS RAID1 for mirroring and the two drives, Harddisk 0 and Harddisk 1 respectively, to install Proxmox. If we pick one of the filesystems such as ext3, ext4, or xfs instead of ZFS, the Harddisk options dialog box will look like the following screenshot, that is, with different set of options:

Selecting a filesystem gives us the following advanced options:

hdsize: This is the total drive size to be used by the Proxmox installation.
swapsize: This defines the swap partition size.
maxroot: This defines the maximum size to be used by the root partition.
minfree: This defines the minimum free space that should remain after the Proxmox installation.
maxvz: This defines the maximum size for data partition. This is usually /var/lib/vz.

Key benefits

Formulate Proxmox-based solutions and set up virtual machines of any size while gaining expertise even on the most complex multi-cluster setups

Master the skills needed to analyze, monitor, and troubleshoot real-world virtual environments

This is the most up-to-date title on mastering Proxmox, with examples based on the new Linux Kernel 4.2 and Debian Jessie (8.x)

Description

Proxmox is an open source server virtualization solution that has enterprise-class features to manage virtual machines, to be used for storage, and to virtualize both Linux and Windows application workloads. You begin with refresher on the advanced installation features and the Proxmox GUI to familiarize yourself with the Proxmox VE hypervisor. You then move on to explore Proxmox under the hood, focusing on the storage systems used with Proxmox. Moving on, you will learn to manage KVM Virtual Machines and Linux Containers and see how networking is handled in Proxmox. You will then learn how to protect a cluster or a VM with a firewall and explore the new HA features introduced in Proxmox VE 4 along with the brand new HA simulator. Next, you will dive deeper into the backup/restore strategy followed by learning how to properly update and upgrade a Proxmox node. Later, you will learn how to monitor a Proxmox cluster and all of its components using Zabbix. By the end of the book, you will become an expert at making Proxmox environments work in production environments with minimum downtime.

What you will learn

[*] Install the basic Proxmox VE nodes [*] Get to know the Proxmox Graphical User Interface (GUI) [*] See and understand Proxmox's internal structure and mechanics [*] Create and manage KVM- or LXC-based virtual machines [*] Understand advanced virtual networks [*] Leverage the power of the built-in Proxmox firewall to provide protection at any level [*] Configure high availability Proxmox nodes [*] Learn different backup strategies and to restore a VM in the event of a disaster to ensure data safety [*] Monitor a Proxmox cluster and all of its components using Zabbix [*] Plan large virtual environments for mission critical virtual environments [*] Work through real-world scenarios to troubleshoot Proxmox