#Proxmox Backup Server

[veuhoffblog]

Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) Upgrade: Eine Aktualisierung von 2.4 auf 3.0 durchführen

Vor wenigen Tagen, am 28. Juni 2023, ist die Version 3.0 vom Proxmox Backup Server (PBS) veröffentlicht worden. In dieser Anleitung zeige ich euch, wie sich der Server auf die neue Version upgraden lässt. Ein Tutorial darüber, wie ihr in wenigen Schritten einen Server mit Proxmox-VE...[Weiterlesen]

[virtualizationhowto]

Proxmox Backup Server: Ultimate Install, Backup, and Restore Guide

Proxmox Backup Server: Ultimate Install, Backup, and Restore Guide #proxmox #proxmoxbackup #proxmoxbackupserver #PVEbackup #dataprotectionproxmox #virtualizationhowto #homelab #selfhosted #VMbackup #containerbackup #disasterrecovery #ultimateDRguide

Backups are essential to running Proxmox VE in the home lab or production to avoid data loss. Proxmox Backup Server is a free solution to back up and recover Proxmox VE VMs and containers.  Table of contentsWhat is Proxmox Backup Server?Proxmox Backup Server featuresProxmox Backup Server installation step-by-step instructionsLogging into the Proxmox Backup client interfaceAdding a datastore for…

[techav]

If It's a Hack and It Works, Is It Really a Hack?

I have a couple servers at home — one running Proxmox VE and one running Proxmox Backup. I use the VM server when I need to spin up a development environment, for running the odd game server, serving files locally, running Home Assistant, etc. I also like to donate spare cycles to Folding@Home. The backup server of course is in case I do something stupid on the VM server.

There's just one problem with that. My second-hand 8-year-old dual-Xeon server runs hot.

It was too much to keep running in my home office. Between the two servers, my desktop, and my work laptop, I was regularly seeing ambient temperatures around 26°C. It was just too warm for comfort.

Last summer I moved my network gear and the two servers into the front coat closet. This was great for me working in my home office, but not so great for my servers. Despite adding a passthrough vent to the closet door and a vent fan to the ceiling, the closet was still consistently in the 26°-30°C range.

The ideal solution would probably be to use an enclosed server rack and run an exhaust vent up from the top. Unfortunately, rack-mount server cases are expensive, enclosed racks are very expensive, and my closet is too small for that anyway.

So I hacked together a solution.

I built a frame out of some cheap 1x2 lumber and wrapped a piece of thin sheet steel around the sides to make a crude plenum. On top, I added a 10x6 register box with a semirigid vent hose coming out of it. This gives me a guide for drawing air out of the servers and guiding it up to the vent fan in the ceiling.

To help things along, I added a 120mm fan inside the register box. But not some whisper-quiet Noctua. This is (if the Amazon listing is to be believed) a 5000 RPM, 210 CFM monster of a fan. It's loud, but moves a lot of air.

Too loud in fact. Its droning could not be silenced by any mere closet door. I had to add a PWM fan speed controller to calm it down. It's a cheap unit from Amazon, but it came with a temperature probe and it has a configurable operating range.

The result? Where previously the entire closet was consistently above 26°C, now it's staying around 23°. There is a difference of 5°C between ambient in the closet and the air inside the exhaust duct, so it is doing its job of redirecting the hot air from the servers.

I call that a successful hack.

[b2bcybersecurity]

Die neue Veeam Data Platform v12.2 erweitert Datenresilienz auf weitere Plattformen und Anwendungen. Das neueste Update von Veeam erweitert die Plattformunterstützung um Integrationen für Nutanix Prism, Proxmox VE und MongoDB, bietet eine breitere Cloud-Unterstützung und ermöglicht den sicheren Umstieg auf neue Plattformen. Die Veeam Data Platform v12.2 wird um die Unterstützung für den Schutz von Daten auf eine Vielzahl neuer Plattformen erweitert und die Fähigkeiten in puncto End-to-End-Cybersicherheit weiterentwickelt. Diese neue Version kombiniert umfangreiche Backup-, Wiederherstellungs- und Sicherheitsfunktionen mit der Möglichkeit, Kunden bei der Migration und Sicherung von Daten auf neuen Plattformen zu unterstützen. Die Veeam Data Platform v12.2 ist eine umfassende Lösung, die es Organisationen ermöglicht, operative Agilität und Sicherheit aufrechtzuerhalten, während sie kritische Daten vor sich wandelnden Cyberbedrohungen und unerwarteten Entwicklungen schützen. Veeam Data Platform v12.2 Mit der Veeam Data Platform v12.2 genießen Organisationen die Freiheit, ihre bevorzugte Infrastruktur mit skalierbarem, richtlinienbasiertem Schutz zu wählen. Die neue Integration mit Nutanix Prism Central bietet den branchenbesten Schutz basierend auf den Anforderungen von Unternehmen. Darüber hinaus ermöglicht die Unterstützung für den neuen Proxmox VE-Hypervisor Unternehmen, ihre Umgebungen nach ihren eigenen Bedingungen zu migrieren und zu modernisieren. Die Sicherung von MongoDB ist ebenfalls enthalten und bietet Unveränderbarkeit, zentrales Management und schnelle Wiederherstellung. Die neue Plattform hilft Organisationen dabei, ihre Transformation in die Cloud, neue Hypervisoren oder HCI zu beschleunigen. Sie bietet Unterstützung für Amazon FSx, Amazon RedShift, Azure Cosmos DB und Azure Data Lake Storage. Zudem bietet die Veeam Data Platform v12.2 eine vollständige Verwaltung der YARA-Regeln, einschließlich RBAC, sicherer Verteilung und orchestriertem Scannen von Backups, was eine rechtzeitige Erkennung von Problemen ermöglicht und die Einhaltung von Compliance-Regeln gewährleistet. Verbesserung der Sicherheitslage Mit der Veeam Data Platform v12.2 wird die Verbesserung der Sicherheitslage und die Optimierung der Betriebsabläufe erleichtert. Erweiterte Alarmsysteme zur Überprüfung der Integrität von Daten und zur Schließung von Lücken bei der Datenerfassung helfen dabei, Sicherheitsprobleme zu identifizieren. Darüber hinaus können Backups zur Archivspeicherung beschleunigt werden, um Kosten zu optimieren, ohne die Compliance zu gefährden. Veeam Data Platform v12.2 bietet verschiedene neue Funktionen - Backup für Proxmox VE: Schützen Sie den nativen Hypervisor, ohne die Verwaltung oder Verwendung von Backup-Agenten. Profitieren Sie von flexiblen Wiederherstellungsoptionen, einschließlich VM-Wiederherstellungen von und auf VMware, Hyper-V, Nutanix AHV, oVirt KVM, AWS, Azure und Google Cloud sowie Wiederherstellungen von Backups physischer Server direkt in Proxmox VE (für DR oder Virtualisierung/Migration). - Backup für MongoDB: Stärken Sie Ihre Cyberresilienz und nutzen Sie unveränderliche Backups, Sicherungskopien und fortschrittliche Speicherfunktionen. - Verbesserte Nutanix AHV-Integration: Schützen Sie kritische Nutanix AHV-Daten vor Replikationsknoten, ohne die Produktionsumgebung zu beeinträchtigen. Profitieren Sie von einer tiefgreifenden Nutanix Prism-Integration mit richtlinienbasierten Sicherungsaufträgen, verbesserter Backup-Sicherheit und Flexibilität bei der Netzwerkgestaltung. - Erweiterte AWS-Unterstützung: Erweitern Sie die native Ausfallsicherheit auf Amazon FSx und Amazon RedShift durch richtlinienbasierten Schutz und schnelle, automatisierte Wiederherstellung. - Erweiterte Microsoft Azure-Unterstützung: Erweitern Sie die native Ausfallsicherheit auf Azure Cosmos DB und Azure Data Lake Storage Gen2 für zuverlässigen Schutz und schnelle, automatisierte Wiederherstellung.     Passende Artikel zum Thema Read the full article

[mip248]

Airwaves (Or, how I learned to stop worrying and love the aircraft on my screen

Admittedly, I'm a bit of a fan of aviation. Most forms of transit actually, but that's for a different blog. I like aircraft. They've always fascinated me, and at a point, I'd wanted to get my pilots license.

I just think they're neat. I enjoy flying, I enjoy the intricacies of the taxiing, the take-off, the landing, and hopefully enjoying in-flight wi-fi in-between. I enjoy seeing and knowing the ins and outs of how I get from Point A to Point B via plane.

So what better way to enjoy two things at the same time, than by mixing my fascination of aviation with my passion for technology! I was shown this by a colleague at a past workplace, and I just HAD to have one myself. Below, I'll be chronicling my journey, experience, frustrations and wins with tracking aircraft in my area over ADSB.

Our adventures begin with this little nugget - I figured I'd start small and assuming all goes well, I'd scale up. Here's what it looked like initially

Not bad - just on 100nmi of range.

Once I moved to this arrangement, I was getting no more than 25nmi to the south, but got over 100nmi to the north, which was a pleasant boost, no doubt helped by the wall.

I invested in a RadarBox ADS-B FlightStick and the associated dipole antenna.

25nmi to the south, and more than 135nmi to the north. A sound improvement, but we can do better!

And it starts with the roof!

Much improved coverage all-round! 107nmi to the west, 162nmi to the east and north, and around 80nmi to the south. The Pi was in the roof, running off a POE Spliter

This is where I begin to have issues though.

POE Splitter burn-outs

SD Card corruptions

The Airnav stick not being recognised

So I get through the POE Splitter burnouts by getting another one. I get another ~2-4 weeks out of that one. Then the SD Card dies. I swap it over and get about 2 months. Then it dies. Amongst this, the Airnav stick is being less than helpful and is not consistently picked up by the Pi.

Not good.

So where to from here? I saw a few options:

Try and have the Pi network boot the ADSB feeder image from a server

Get another SD card and go again

Try USB over Cat 6 converters and do it that way

Install an Active USB Extension cable

Option 2 was the last option - I really didn't want to go down this route because it's just me purchasing SD cards again and again and restoring backups and I have better things to do.

Option 1 was the first idea - it keeps the power and network up near the AirNav stick and is what I experimented with first.

I found that I was not able to get much love with that - mostly involved with trying to get rootFS off the SD card was painful and difficult and was abandoned after a weekend.

This led me to option 3 - try some USB over Cat converters and give that a go. I'll virtualise the ADSB receiver as a VM in ProxMox and do it that way. And I did - I picked up these promising DOSS USBCAT100 dongles, which on the product page spec sheet advise that USB 2.0 full power/speed can be done up to 50 metres. They arrived, yay, happy days! I thought "before I get up in the roof and use these and find out they may not work, I better test these", and so I did, with my iPhone and a 1.5 metre Cat 6 cable only to see...

Wonderful. It's USB 1.1 speeds. Not great. The common consensus if you look up USB speeds and RTLSDR sticks is that they need USB 2.0 speeds, so this can't be used, and I had to get a return.

So I went for option 4 - a 15M Active USB Extension Cable from 4Cabling. I got up in the roof and ran that cable from the rack to the spot, plugged the AirNav stick in and connected the server and... Something...ISH? The stick fired up, but the light on the stick was flickering, and the data activity lights on the USB cable were not consistent either. Eventually both got settled and off we went.

Off we went to not too much luck. Every 2-6 hours, the stick would fail/stop and not be recognisable by the host.. How annoying... No mix of USB 2.0 or USB 3.0 ports would work. Rebooting the ProxMox host didn't yield any wins - I had to shutdown and power on every time this happened. Thinking it may be power related, I got one of those USB splitter cables that shipped with many external HDDs of yore (pre-USB 3.0 days) to see if that would make a difference.

And it did, again briefly. No mix of 2.0 or 3.0 ports worked, but I DID have some better luck with using a USB power bank on the power-only cable, but that failed again (just after a longer time period), and so did using an Apple 10W USB Power Brick. A 12W Apple Power Brick also didn't work.

So, now with seemingly nothing else to try, I went with a FlightAware Pro Stick Plus. It's been installed for over a week now and is happily plodding away! I'm getting coverage of more than 200nmi north, getting around 175nmi east, more than 100nmi south, and 125nmi west. The amount of hits is also much more consistent.

For reference, for my aircraft tracking, I use adsb.im to track and feed. Make sure you take backups early and often!

[geekforcedotcom]

SysAdmin Sunday

One of my ProxMox hypervisor machines has a failing disk. Of course, it's the disk that stores the root filesystem of my homelab DNS server.

remediated by pulling a backup of running Pi-hole and restoring to the other hypervisor, running from an NVME drive now.

The best thing about running a Pi-hole, besides the whole house ad blocking thing, is the skinnable interface.

[emacs-unofficial]

For storage, get a NAS. Either prebuilt (e.g synology) or build something yourself using truenad.

Prebuilt has the advantage that they most likely use very energy efficient parts that are hard to aquire or hard to work with for DYI builds.

For offsite backup, the cheapest would be to have a friend with some storage and use each others systems as offsite storage.

If that is not an option, try to get some cheap hosted S3 storage. Amazon has the lowest running cost with their longterm/archival solutions, but they come with the downside of steep transfer costs once you need to get to your data. Other people recommend backblaze. I'm personally using Wasabi.

Software wise, there is a lot good software to choose from. What exactly you want to use depends on your usecase.

Dirvish if you want to let a backup server pull the data instead of pushing from the source

duplicity is what I'm currently using to backup my VPS to S3 Storage

restic as an alternative for duplicity

Déjà Dup for a nice GUI app for the desktop (based on duplicity or restic)

If you backup windows and don't mind the software not being open source, I really recommend veeam free. Just works rock solidly.

honorable mentions: rclone, syncthing (not really a backup), whatever is built in to what you use (e.g. proxmox backup settings, Synology Hyperbackup, etc.)

Most importantly, remember the 3-2-1 Principle

you should have 3 copies of your data (your production data and 2 backup copies) on two different media with one copy off-site for disaster recovery.

Pulled a sneaky on my co-worker today :p

[webyildiz]

Proxmox is an open-source server virtualization platform that allows you to manage and deploy virtual machines and containers. It is based on Debian and provides a powerful web-based graphical interface for easy management. Here's an ultimate guide on how to install and configure Proxmox: [tie_index]System Requirements[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] System Requirements: A dedicated physical machine or server. Sufficient CPU, RAM, and storage resources for your virtualization needs. Compatible hardware for virtualization (CPU with Intel VT or AMD-V support).  [tie_index]Installation[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Installation: Download the Proxmox VE ISO image from the Proxmox website (https://www.proxmox.com/downloads). Create a bootable USB or burn the ISO to a DVD. Boot your server from the USB or DVD. Follow the on-screen instructions to install Proxmox VE. Choose a suitable installation option, such as wiping the entire disk or installing alongside an existing operating system. Set a root password and configure the network settings.  [tie_index]Initial Configuration[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Initial Configuration: After installation, access the Proxmox web interface by opening a web browser and entering the IP address of your Proxmox server (https://:8006). Accept the self-signed SSL certificate warning (or install a trusted SSL certificate). Log in using the root username and the password you set during installation.  [tie_index]Network Configuration[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Network Configuration: Configure your network interfaces by going to "Datacenter" in the left-hand menu and selecting "Network" in the top menu. Edit the "vmbr0" interface to match your network settings, such as IP address, subnet mask, gateway, and DNS servers.  [tie_index]Storage Configuration[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Storage Configuration: Proxmox uses different storage types, including local storage, iSCSI, NFS, and Ceph. Choose the appropriate storage type based on your requirements. To add storage, go to "Datacenter" and select "Storage" in the top menu. Click "Add" and follow the wizard to configure the storage type, path, and other relevant settings.  [tie_index]Create Virtual Machines (VMs)[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Create Virtual Machines (VMs): Click on "Create VM" in the top menu to start the VM creation wizard. Select the desired options, such as VM ID, name, guest OS, CPU, RAM, and disk size. Choose the storage location for the VM disk. Configure the network settings for the VM. Complete the wizard, and the VM will be created.  [tie_index]Additional Configuration[/tie_index] [padding top="0" bottom="0" right="5%" left="5%"] Additional Configuration: Proxmox offers many advanced features, such as high availability (HA), clustering, and backups. Explore the Proxmox documentation for more details on these features and how to configure them based on your requirements. Remember to regularly update your Proxmox installation by applying the latest updates and security patches. Please note that this is a general guide, and the steps may vary based on the specific version of Proxmox you are using. Always refer to the official Proxmox documentation for detailed instructions and the most up-to-date information.

[veuhoffblog]

Proxmox Backup Server: Wie Backups eingerichtet werden

Im vorherigen Artikel haben wir gemeinsam einen Proxmox Backup Server installiert. Dieser Beitrag baut auf dem anderen auf und ist so gesehen die Fortsetzung. Ich erkläre euch die wichtigsten Schritte und Einstellungen, die direkt nach der Installation und Inbetriebnahme...[Weiterlesen]

[virtualizationhowto]

NAKIVO Proxmox Backup in v10.11 New Features

NAKIVO Proxmox Backup in v10.11 New Features @nakivo #proxmox #nakivo #proxmoxbackup #proxmoxbackupserver #commercialproxmoxbackup #nakivo1011 #backup #disasterrecovery #replication #321backup #virtualization #homeserver #homelab #vhtforums

Well, in a move that makes it one of the first (if not THE first) commercial backup vendor to offer support for Proxmox Backup and data protection, NAKIVO Backup & Replication v10.11 indeed adds just that, including other new features in this release. Let’s see why this is important with the massive demand from companies for the Proxmox VE hypervisor due to the news of the VMware by Broadcom…

[computingpostcom]

The Network File System (NFS) is a well-proven, widely-supported and standardized network protocol used to share files between separate computer systems. The Network Information Service (NIS) is commonly used to provide centralized user management in the network. When NFS is combined with NIS, you’re able to have file and directory permissions for access control in the network. The default configuration of NFS is to completely trust the network and any machine connected to a trusted network is able to access any files that the server makes available. In Proxmox Virtualization Environment you can use local directories or locally mounted shares for storage. A directory is a file level storage that can be used to store content type like containers, virtual disk images, ISO images, templates, or backup files. In this post we discuss how you can configure NFS share on Proxmox VE for ISO images. The same process applies for any other storage purpose like storage of virtual disk images and templates. In Proxmox VE, storage configurations are located in the file /etc/pve/storage.cfg. You can list contents in /var/lib/vz/ directory: $ ls /var/lib/vz/ dump images template Within templates directory we can see iso and cache sub-directories. $ ls /var/lib/vz/template/ cache iso The table below shows a predefined directory layout to store different content types into different sub-directories Content type Subdir VM images images// ISO images template/iso/ Container templates template/cache/ Backup files dump/ Snippets snippets/ Configure NFS server Share Login to the server that will act as NFS server and configure export for ISO contents. If you’re using a ready solution with NFS feature, you can skip this steps. Install NFS server package on your Linux system. ### RHEL Based systems ### sudo yum -y install nfs-utils sudo systemctl enable --now rpcbind nfs-server sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=nfs --permanent sudo firewall-cmd --reload #If use NFSv3 allow the following sudo firewall-cmd --add-service=nfs3,mountd,rpc-bind --permanent sudo firewall-cmd --reload ### Debian Based systems ### sudo apt -y install nfs-kernel-server Let’s now configure NFS export by editing the file below $ sudo vim /etc/exports /nfs/isos *(rw,no_root_squash,no_subtree_check) In the example we’re setting /nfs/isos as NFS share for ISO images on Proxmox VE. Confirm it works after the changes by re-exporting shares: $ sudo exportfs -rrv exporting *:/nfs/isos Mount NFS ISO share on Proxmox VE server Install NFS utility packages in your Debian / Ubuntu system. sudo apt -y install nfs-common Our NFS server setup is: NFS Server IP address: 172.20.30.3 ISO Export path on NFS Server: /nfs/isos Ensure you don’t have any data inside isos directory: ls /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ On Proxmox VE, which acts as NFS client, execute the following to display RPC information of the remote NFS server. $ rpcinfo -p 172.20.30.3 program vers proto port service 100000 4 tcp 111 portmapper 100000 3 tcp 111 portmapper 100000 2 tcp 111 portmapper 100000 4 udp 111 portmapper 100000 3 udp 111 portmapper 100000 2 udp 111 portmapper 100005 1 udp 20048 mountd 100005 1 tcp 20048 mountd 100005 2 udp 20048 mountd 100005 2 tcp 20048 mountd 100024 1 udp 46068 status 100024 1 tcp 43599 status 100005 3 udp 20048 mountd 100005 3 tcp 20048 mountd 100003 3 tcp 2049 nfs 100003 4 tcp 2049 nfs 100227 3 tcp 2049 100003 3 udp 2049 nfs 100227 3 udp 2049 100021 1 udp 44453 nlockmgr 100021 3 udp 44453 nlockmgr 100021 4 udp 44453 nlockmgr 100021 1 tcp 35393 nlockmgr 100021 3 tcp 35393 nlockmgr 100021 4 tcp 35393 nlockmgr

Run the showmount to display all active folder exports in an NFS server: $ showmount -e 172.20.30.3 Export list for 172.20.30.3: /nfs/isos * Option 1: Configure mount using Proxmox pvesm (Recommended) pvesm is a powerful Proxmox VE Storage Manager command line tool. Use the tool to scan for NFS shares in the server we just configured. $ sudo pvesm scan nfs 172.20.30.3 /nfs/isos * We’re going to run commands shared below to configure NFS Storage for ISO images on our Proxmox environment. sudo pvesm add nfs NFS-iso --server 172.20.30.3 --path /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ --export /nfs/isos --content iso Where: 172.20.30.3 is the IP address of NFS server /nfs/isos is the path to the iso folder on NFS server (NFS export path) /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ path on Proxmox server where NFS share is mounted Listing contents of /etc/pve/storage.cfg after command execution. $ cat /etc/pve/storage.cfg dir: local path /var/lib/vz content iso,vztmpl,backup lvmthin: local-lvm thinpool data vgname pve content rootdir,images nfs: NFS-iso export /nfs/isos path /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ server 172.20.30.3 content iso We can confirm new lines were added to the file. With the df command you can check if mounting was successful. $ df -hT /var/lib/vz/template/iso Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on 172.20.30.3:/nfs/isos nfs4 400G 39G 341G 11% /var/lib/vz/template/iso Option 2: Configure mount using /etc/fstab You can also use mount command for runtime testing if Proxmox server can access NFS server and exported directory. sudo mount -t nfs 172.20.30.3:/nfs/isos /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ To persist the configurations use /etc/fstab file. $ sudo vim /etc/fstab # Add NFS ISO share mount 172.20.30.3:/nfs/isos /var/lib/vz/template/iso nfs defaults 0 0 Unmount before testing: sudo umount /var/lib/vz/template/iso Validate mounting can be done successfully sudo mount /var/lib/vz/template/iso Check with the df command: $ df -hT /var/lib/vz/template/iso/ Filesystem Type Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on 172.20.30.3:/nfs/isos nfs4 400G 20G 360G 6% /var/lib/vz/template/iso Login to Proxmox Web dashboard and check the status of your mount We can see a list of images available on NFS share. From here VM installation with the ISOs can begin.

[purplecycleninja]

TOP THINGS TO CONSIDER BEFORE STARTING YOUR VPS HOSTING BUSINESS

FIND A RELIABLE PROVIDER

In a nutshell, the alternative plan is to rent one or more servers from an existing hosting provider, set up a control panel to resell VPS from, and then sell them to customers.

This will allow you to significantly cut costs and actually start a hosting business with a modest investment.

In order to succeed, you have to find an established provider that offers cheap prices and has reliable services at the same time.

FOCUS ON A NICHE

Forget about selling generic VPS services, the competition is simply too high. You’ll have to target a specific niche; a proper market research will help you find one.

Since a few servers are easier to manage than a large number, you could focus for example on a very fast support response time, and charge premium prices for premium support. Make sure that you honor your promises if you take this route.

Alternatively, you might want to consider selling VPS servers to a crowd or niche that you’re particularly familiar with. Perhaps you’re part of a gaming community that needs VPS servers on a frequent basis. Or perhaps you’re a developer or data scientist who needs servers to run your software, and you know other colleagues who have the same need.

The possibilities are endless, and the key advantage of taking this approach is that you can speak very clearly in a language that your customers will understand (because you’re one of them!).

DESIGN YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE

After you buy your servers from a hosting provider and have a target in mind, it is time to create your VPS infrastructure.

You’ll have to design several packages, with a number of CPU cores and various amounts of RAM and disk space.

To make things extra easy, you can simply buy cheap VPS servers from a provider and resell them as is (without needing to set custom CPU or RAM, and just using the specs provided by your hosting provider for each VPS).

These packages can be target-specific; there are for example some applications that don’t need much CPU power but use a lot of memory.

In addition, you can install software or tools on top of the hardware, for example a CMS like WordPress. Offering obsolete packages, such as php 5.3, can also be an interesting niche for people who want to keep old websites online.

In order to create the actual virtual machines, there are several virtualization options. KVM and VMware are free and offer good performance, but most customers want some kind of control panel.

You can try to use one of the free hosting panels like Vesta or ISPConfig, but these can be buggy and require good technical skills for operation and maintenance.

Another alternative is to use Proxmox, which has an open source version that is very stable and offers both KVM and LXC virtualization.

If you want to resell shared or reseller hosting, instead of fully-fledged VPS servers, the safe options are WHM/cPanel and Plesk, which are very reliable and stable control panels. While Plesk is a little cheaper and can be installed on more operating systems, WHM is the best panel on the market and has great features and support.

AUTOMATE BILLING

If you start small and only have a few customers, you can use an open-source suite to manually handle billing.

Later, as your business grows, this will no longer be an effective option. There are several billing applications on the market that are especially designed for hosting companies and integrate with platforms such as WHM.

The best of these are WHMCS and Blesta, both have a form of free trial that you can use to test them and choose the one that suits best the needs of your company.

MANAGE YOUR INFRASTRUCTURE

Every hosting provider must have at least three basic systems in place: active monitoring, backups and a support ticketing platform.

There are both free and paid alternatives for all of these; you should try the open source options first, these include Nagios, Cacti, Zabbix (monitoring), Bacula, UrBackup (backups), or osTicket (for customer support).

Keep in mind that the open source systems are free but installing and configuring them can be quite difficult.

A central systems management solution like Spacewalk can make your life easier.

HANDLE SPAM AND ABUSE

Allowing abuse from your servers can ruin the reputation of your company, so you must prevent it.

WHM and Plesk include dedicated tools that detect and limit spam and other malicious activities. If you don’t use one of these panels, you’ll have to configure your monitoring system to alert you of any suspicious network traffic.

If you need an open source tool to handle your abuse requests (for SPAM, DMCA, and so forth), a good option is to setup a dedicated abuse email (IE, abuse@domain.com), and then forward all mail into a tool called abuse.io. It’s an open source software that helps you manage abuse requests that come via email.

CLOSING THOUGHTS

Starting a hosting company as a reseller is a very good idea because you can gain invaluable experience without risking a lot of money.

Many major players in the industry have actually started as resellers and then expanded their business, you can use the same strategy to test your management skills and build a solid platform for future growth.

[lausitz-online]

"Gewährleistung der Datenintegrität" - Backup von Proxmox Backup Server

[digital-dynasty]

heise | Virtualisierung: Proxmox Virtual Environment 6.4 im Kurztest

Proxmox hat seine komplette Containerumgebung überarbeitet: Nach dem Mail Gateway 6.4 folgen nun das Virtual Environment 6.4 und der Backup Server 1.1. Read more www.heise.de/tests/…-... www.digital-dynasty.net/de/teamblogs/…

http://www.digital-dynasty.net/de/teamblogs/heise-virtualisierung-proxmox-virtual-environment-6-4-im-kurztest

[easycomputertutorial]

Fstrim on Ubuntu 18.04

Fstrim on Ubuntu 18.04

Recently I discovered that my backups of my proxmox virtual machines were taking up too much space on my storage server. After doing some research, i found out that I could run fstrim -v / to remove deleted space from my drive. Now what I needed was a way to automated it. Using Cron I was able to make it run every 30 min and generate a log file, to verify and make sure its working correctly. But…