Hello all !
I'm working on a virtualisation project for a client. We will move from a physical server hosting http, mysql and e-mail services on a single machine, to another physical server hosting 3 KVM virtual servers : the services will be splited, one for each service. Actually, we use Virtualmin on the physical server to manage virtual domains, databases, e-mail accounts, backup and restore, etc.
We want to use Cloudmin Pro to manage the new system, specially the KVM VM's (Start, stop, backup...).
The question is : how would Virtualmin help in the migration process, and how will it work afterwards, regarding virtual domains ? Will we be able to split services between several Virtual servers, or is Virtualmin limited within the host in which it is installed, even integrated in Cloudmin ?
Also, before acquiring the licenses, we would to "test drive" Cloudmin. We cannot use the GPL version for the tests, as we work with KVM virtualisation. Is there a demo site available, or is it possible to get a "trial license" ?
Thanks in advance for all insights and answers. And thank you for your fantastic work, Virtualmin folks !
Hi Mcordas,
We are using cloudmin on production environment. The answers are better given, sometimes, by the ones that are using the product. See it as a case studie :)
We have physical servers as bare metal with XEN and KVM. On those, we deploy VM's, that are controled via Cloudmin Server. We have found some limitations regarding virtualmin and cloudmin, such as quota control, when we have a client using hosting with apache on one server and mysql on another. You just cannot control the quota on the two servers for the same account. But we can live with that, due to the fact that we do not make massive hosting with virtuamin ( for know :) ) and the servers are used major for VM's for monthly renting.
I can tell you, after some migration tasks, that virtualmin and cloumind are very successful in restoring backups. Therefore, we use backup and restore techniques to transfer hosting accounts from server to server without a scratch. And if you have already on the physical server virtualmin, you can use it to create backup of your accounts, and then restore them on the virtualized servers. However, pay attention to backup also all options of virtualmin. And then restore only a basic account with the virtualmin modules, and only then, all other accounts. We have found that some accounts were not imported successfully before, due to the fact that not all the options, templates, plans, etc... were configured on the new virtualmin server. After this approach, everything was easy and fast :)
Regards,
Hi Filipe,
Thanks for your answer ! It confirms what I thought. In fact, in the meantime, we had a trial license and my clients decided to buy the Cloudmin Pro license.
We could test domains migration from a physical server to a kvm Virtual Machine, and it worked perfectly. As we wanted to split MySQL databases and the web service between to VMs, we dit the "splitting" after the migration.
What wasn't clear for me in the documentation was if Cloudmin was able to split the services for the domains, and use "specialized" servers. It doesn't. Virtual domains are vertical : they're bound to a particular machine (physical or virtual), and the machine has to take care of all services (http, ftp, mail, mysql...).
In our case, we will have to split users management (on the http and ftp VM, and on the mysql machine).
One solution would be to use an OpenLDAP server, but just for a few users, I think it doesn't make sense.
Thanks again !
Regards,
Miguel.
Hey Miguel,
Actually, Virtualmin fully supports running MySQL on a remote server...so, you don't need to have the databases on the same machine, and you could have a "specialist" database system that all of your Virtualmin servers use for databases. You just need to tell the Webmin MySQL module to access the database remotely and provide the necessary information to get it talking.
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Hi Joe,
Sorry for the late answer, but thank you very much for your idea. It's indeed a good and simple solution for MySQL databases.
Concerning the e-mails, we decided to use another product and to manage them outside Cloudmin/Virtualmin.
Regards,
Miguel.