I've been using Virtualmin for some time now. I don't consider myself a noob, but every now and then an issue comes up that kind of makes me feel like one.
Traditionally, I used Virtualmin to create test environments. I ran my own physical servers so my installations were all done locally, using Virtualmin & Cloudmin for physical servers. I'm moving away from physical equipment, to GCE.
Installation hasn't been a problem, using the "Backports Debian Wheezy" OS and the Virtualmin install script. I can have Virtualmin turned up in a matter of seconds, but disks and partitions are throwing me for a loop.
All of the GCE environments seem to provide only a 10GB Boot disk. This would be fine if the combination of all hosted websites and their accompanying services (Database, Email & etc) never exceeded 10GB, right? But they will!
I know how to create additional disks within the GCE instance, but how do I utilize the created disks correctly with Virtualmin?
I'm assuming this would utilize the "multi-partition" setup/installation method, but I'm not exactly sure. I cannot seem to find any setup guides for Virtualmin and GCE, so I'd love to hear some feedback about how to accomplish the use of additional disks in the GCE cloud environment.
Comments
Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 02/23/2015 - 10:27 Comment #1
Howdy -- I want to start off by saying I'm by no means a GCE expert, and I don't have a GCE instance I use.
But I believe it works in a similar way to Amazon's EC2 and S3 services, in that the Virtual Machine and storage services are provided separately.
So you'd first setup the Virtual Machine that you need, and then you'd obtain the storage that you're interested in.
Information about obtaining storage is available here:
https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/disks/
Does that look like that'll do what you're after?
It looks like the Virtualmin Pro licenses associated with your account are expired though -- are you using Virtualmin GPL now? If so, and you had any followup questions, we'd encourage you to ask those in the Forums. We monitor the Forums, along with lots of wonderful folks in the community. Thanks!
Submitted by bamajr on Mon, 02/23/2015 - 11:28 Comment #2
@andreycheck yes, my personal licenses are expired, but my client's licenses are not. NACITS for example, is my non-profit and has two licenses, which are not expired.
I have found a work-around, though I'm not sure it is the best option. I know the default installation of Virtualmin, at least several years ago, was best performed with the install script on a single partition machine. However, I also know, there was a way to do and install with:
/ /boot swap /var /home
...partitions as well.
For my work-around, I first created a 1000GB SSD, using the latest Debian (w/ backports) OS Image. Then I created my instance, specifying that disk as the disk to use. This is different than the normal GCE Instance Creation process, because, by default, it only creates a 10GB disk.
This method gives me 1000GB SSD for a single Virtualmin Web Hosting Environment - but then again, it is limited to that same 1000GB SSD.
I know you can add disks with GCE. That is not a problem. I have several in use for other projects. My issue is how to utilize those disks in the Virtualmin Environment.
I suppose I could mount an additional disks for /var and /home and then create a symbolic link from the /var & /home directories, to the appropriate disk, but I'm not sure that would work with the Virtualmin install scripts correctly, or not.
Any more thoughts?
Submitted by andreychek on Mon, 02/23/2015 - 11:37 Comment #3
You could always mount the additional storage on /home, and them symlink other things such as /var to point to a location within /home.
The suexec binary is programmed to only run web apps out of /home, I don't believe /home can be a symlink due to that. But other things can point to /home.
Submitted by bamajr on Mon, 02/23/2015 - 12:02 Comment #4
I was basing this idea off of the "Multiple Partitions" information, found here: https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/installation/automated
Similar to the "Multiple Partitions" installation method, I'd like to find a way to isolate the space used up on databases and the space used up on data, email, CGI scripts, logs & etc., all while being able to preserve the integrity of the Virtualmin Web Admin interface.
Submitted by bamajr on Mon, 02/23/2015 - 13:23 Comment #5
The other issue is that of FQDN. How in the world do we set the FQDN when using the Google Compute Engine?
Submitted by azazqadir on Tue, 03/29/2016 - 03:16 Comment #6
andreychek is right. Hosting and storage are provided separately. They are two separate services. If you want storage and hosting in a single package, then you will have to use a managed hosting provider, like Cloudways. Most of them provides hosting along with storage service for backups.