Learning Proxmox VE

By Goldman Rik

Unleash the power of Proxmox VE by setting up a dedicated virtual environment to serve both containers and virtual machines

About This Book

- Create virtual machines and containers from the comfort of your workstation using Proxmox VE's web-based management interface
- Maximize performance, security, and the quality of virtual services by tailoring container and virtual machine configurations based on established best practices
- Put theory to practice by deploying virtual servers that promise portability, modularity, flexibility, security, and quality of service at any scale

Who This Book Is For

This book is intended for server and system administrators and engineers who are eager to take advantage of the potential of virtual machines and containers to manage servers more efficiently and make the best use of resources, from energy consumption to hardware utilization and physical real estate

What You Will Learn

- Install and configure Proxmox VE
- Create new virtual machines and containers
- Import container templates and virtual appliances
- Optimize virtual machine performance for common use cases
- Apply the latest security patches to a Proxmox VE host
- Contrast PVE virtual machines and containers to recognize their respective use cases
- Secure virtual machines and containers
- Assess the benefits of virtualization on budgets, server real estate, maintenance, and management time

In Detail

Proxmox VE 4.1 provides an open source, enterprise virtualization platform on which to host virtual servers as either virtual machines or containers.
This book will support your practice of the requisite skills to successfully create, tailor, and deploy virtual machines and containers with Proxmox VE 4.1.
Following a survey of PVE's features and characteristics,this book will contrast containers with virtual machines and establish cases for both. It walks through the installation of Proxmox VE, explores the creation of containers and virtual machines, and suggests best practices for virtual disk creation, network configuration, and Proxmox VE host and guest security. Throughout the book, you will navigate the Proxmox VE 4.1 web interface and explore options for command-line management.

Style and approach

This book is a practical exploration of the different processes and procedures, which are essential in beginning your journey to fluent creation and optimization of effective containers and virtual machines.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Release date: Mar 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9781783981793

Book preview

Table of Contents

Learning Proxmox VE

Credits

About the Author

Acknowledgments

About the Reviewer

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Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book 

Errata

Piracy

Questions

1. Proxmox VE Fundamentals

Proxmox VE in brief

Virtualization with Proxmox VE

KVM

QEMU

OS Virtualization with Proxmox VE

Summary

2. Installing Proxmox VE

Hardware requirements and recommendations for Proxmox VE

Downloading Proxmox VE

Verifying the downloaded image

Ensuring hardware virtualization extensions are installed

Enabling hardware virtualization extensions

Preparing for the Proxmox VE Installer

Installing Proxmox VE

Upgrading PVE from the command line

Disabling the enterprise repository

Enabling a non-subscriber repository

Updating and upgrading Proxmox VE

Summary

3. Creating Containers

Understanding the container advantage

Proxmox VE and the case for LXC

Container templates

Downloading templates

Logging in to Proxmox VE's web interface

Browsing available container templates

Downloading a container

From template to container

Starting and stopping containers

Changing container states with the command line

Accessing a container

Summary

4. Creating Virtual Machines

Distinguishing features of virtual machines

Scenarios for system virtualization

Creating a virtual machine

Installation media

Uploading an ISO file to local storage on PVE

Preparing a virtual machine

Anticipating the configuration tabs

General

OS

CD/DVD

Hard Disk

CPU

Memory

Network

Confirm

Controlling the state of a virtual machine

Controlling a VM from the PVE command line

Practicing the creation of virtual machines

Virtualizing Windows Server 2012r2 with Proxmox VE

Configuring and creating the virtual machine

Starting the VM and installing Windows Server

Creating a VM for Fedora 23 Server

Command line virtual machine creation

Summary

5. Working with Virtual Disks

Understanding virtual disks

Coming to terms

Understanding virtual disk configuration

Choosing a virtual disk format

QCOW2

RAW

VMDK

Choosing a bus

Understanding cache options

Learning more

Summary

6. Networking with Proxmox VE

Proxmox VE network model

Bridged configuration

NAT configuration

Routed configuration

VLAN support

NIC bonding

Network configuration for virtual servers

Providing basic connectivity

Of VMs and vNICs

Bridge configuration

Using NAT configuration

Summary

7. Securing Proxmox VE

Security benefits of virtualization

Attack surface reduction

Isolation

Availability of prior states

Hardware abstraction

Segmentation

Encapsulation and portability

Physical security

Fine privilege control

PVE firewall features

Aggravated vulnerabilities

Denial of service attacks

VM escape and hyper jumping

Virtualization sprawl

At war with complexity

Taking action

Protecting the boot process

Locking down the bootloader

Locking down BIOS/UEFI

Hardening the OS and hypervisor

Prohibit remote access to the hypervisor

Harden SSH

Disabling root account access via SSH

Preventing brute-force attacks against SSH

Relying on key-based authentication

Managing patches

Enterprise subscriptions

Summary

Learning Proxmox VE

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Learning Proxmox VE

Copyright © 2016 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: March 2016

Production reference: 1290316

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

35 Livery Street

Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78398-178-6

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Credits

About the Author

Rik Goldman had 18 years of professional IT experience and 17 years of teaching experience when he became the director of technology and a teacher of advanced computing at Chelsea School in 2012.

Throughout his 10 years at the university, he concentrated on literary computing, new media, humanities computing, and virtuality. At first, Rik supported his studies by developing institutional websites and database applications; eventually, however, he became the administrator of Solaris and Irix servers for West Virginia University's Center for Literary Computing, a lab committed to the study of electronic texts, virtuality, and digital composition and rhetoric.

In the classroom, Rik's commitment to authentic teaching and learning as well as his advocacy of social justice and equity have placed him at the vanguard of technology education. Working with and learning from his students, he has overseen projects that have provided real solutions for school infrastructure, data management, and programming. His many accomplishments reveal an educator who strives to provide authentic opportunities for learning and engagement, but his true legacy lies in what he has engendered in his students: a desire for knowledge, a critical urge, and an analyst's zeal for complex abstractions. Through this work with students and his responsibilities as a systems administrator, Rik has enjoyed a productive preoccupation with virtualization technologies and their impact on popular culture.

Since his full-time adoption of Red Hat 5 at home, he has been committed to GNU/Linux and the underlying philosophies that have made it so successful. Consequently, he is a passionate advocate of open source and free software. Together with his students, he has contributed to the success of a myriad open source endeavors by developing documentation, writing code, and mentoring communities of young developers from around the world.

In his free time, Rik enjoys reading literature, exploring critical theory, listening to records, and traveling to concerts with his family.

Acknowledgments

This book could not have been realized without the kind patience, understanding, and encouragement of Sabre Goldman and our remarkable son, Ender Ripley. Whatever fantastic adventures I dream of, it's through Sabre's unflagging support and enduring patience that those impossible dreams are realized.

The importance that my mother places on the power of words, text, and narrative continues to influence my life's trajectory and always propels me toward opportunities to find the right word. Without her, I wouldn't have had the interest or skills to pursue this opportunity.

Thanks to the Chelsea School community, particularly my colleagues and students, without whom there's no me. I am lucky to be a part of a community that never fails to inspire me to learn, develop, share, and improve.

My sincerest thanks go out to Tim Bielawa, the author of The Linux Sysadmin’s Guide to Virtual Disks. By posting a public draft of his work in progress, he did this project significant good. Cheers to Tim and so many others who contribute documentation of open source projects.

About the Reviewer

Ludovic L’HOIR is 42 years old and has worked in the IT sector for the past 15 years. He first studied Greek Archeology then after his diploma he decided to change his life and left France to live in Australia for about 2 years. He started his IT career at Reuters SA in 2001 in Geneva as a Network Controller Specialist. In 2005, he founded a company that was the first open source cybercafe in France. His career continued as an IT systems administrator at the IT lab of CNRS. Ludovic also worked at Concorde Logistics (OBS) as a Networks and Systems Manager. After this rich experience, he joined MICHELIN (Tyredating) in September 2010 as CTO. Currently, he is the IT Manager of S4M (Success for Mobile), which is a mobile-native ad tech company transforming ads into genuine personalized content for each individual user.

Ludovic is passionate about childhood development. He enjoys writing books for young children (http://ludobooks.fr) and also participating in the doudoulinux project (a Linux distribution especially designed for children to make computer usage as easy and pleasant as possible for them http://doudoulinux.org). In his spare time, Ludovic likes cooking food from different cultures. He lives in the South of France with his wife and 9 year old daughter.

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Preface

Not so many years ago, it would've taken three computers to author this book efficiently on the go. Virtualization, however, has made it possible to write without the obscene hassle of dragging about so much baggage. Virtualization has reduced labor and energy expenditure