Virtualization, as we all know today, is a decades-old technology that was first implemented in the 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 saving 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 infrastructure to be built. 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 available 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 what hardware the hypervisor has been installed on.
The Proxmox Virtual Environment (VE) is a cluster-based hypervisor and one of the best-kept secrets in the virtualization industry. 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, you are no doubt familiar with virtualization, and perhaps well versed with other hypervisors, such as 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 that might just save the day in a production environment. We will also learn how to deploy a highly redundant storage system using Ceph to store virtual machines. So strap yourself in and let's dive into the virtual world with the mighty hypervisor, Proxmox VE.
Before we dive in, it is necessary to understand why one should choose Proxmox over the other mainstream hypervisors. Proxmox is not perfect, but stands out among other contenders with its hard-to-beat features. The following are some of the features that make Proxmox a real game changer.
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 the Proxmox ISO at no cost and raise a fully functional cluster without missing a single hypervisor feature and without paying anything. The main difference between the paid and community subscription level is that the paid subscription receives updates, which go through additional testing and refinement. In a production cluster with a real workload, it is highly recommended to purchase a subscription from Proxmox or Proxmox resellers.
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 9, The Proxmox VE Firewall.
Licensed under Apache 2.0, 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 the 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 8, Network of Virtual Networks.
Proxmox comes with a fully functional graphical user interface (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, Creating a Cluster and Exploring the Proxmox GUI.
A Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a kernel module that is added to Linux for full virtualization to create isolated, fully independent virtual machines. KVMs are not dependent on the host operating system in any way, but they do require the virtualization feature in BIOS to be enabled. A 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 6, KVM Virtual Machines.
Introduced in Proxmox VE 4.0, Linux containers, or LXCs, 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 replaces prior OpenVZ containers, which were the primary containers in the virtualization method in the previous Proxmox versions. If you are not familiar with LXC or want details on it, refer to https://linuxcontainers.org.
We will learn how to create LXC containers and manage them in Chapter 7, LXC Virtual Machines.
Out of the box, Proxmox VE supports a variety of storage systems to store virtual disk images, ISO templates, backups, and so on. All plugins 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 5.0, the following storage plugins are supported:
- The local directory mount points
- LVM
- LVM thin
- NFS
- iSCSI
- GlusterFS
- Ceph RADOS Block Devices (RBD)
- ZFS over iSCSI
- ZFS
We will learn the usage of different storage systems and the types of files they can store in detail in Chapter 4, Storage Systems.
Proxmox has a growing community of users who are always helping others 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 sure is here to stay.
Note
Visit the following link for the official Proxmox forum: https://forum.proxmox.com.
The installation of a Proxmox node is very straightforward. Simply accept the default options, select localization, and enter the network information to install Proxmox VE. We can summarize the installation process in the following steps:
- Download the ISO from the official Proxmox site and prepare a disc with the image (http://proxmox.com/en/downloads).
- Boot the node with the disc and hit Enter to start the installation from the installation GUI, as shown in the following screenshot:
If an optical drive to use the installation disc is unavailable, we can also install Proxmox from a USB drive.
- Progress through the prompts to select options or type in information.
- After the installation is complete, access the Proxmox GUI dashboard using the IP address, as
https://<proxmox_node_ip>:8006.
In some cases, it may be necessary to open the firewall port to allow access to the GUI over port 8006.
