I run a small hosting business using Microsoft Azure, mainly hosting Wordpress but also some traditional sites, the current set up is as follows:
1 x MySQL Database Server (Ubuntu 16.04) 1 x VPS to a single customer (Ubuntu 16.04) 5 x Shared Hosting Web Servers (Ubuntu 16.04 & 18.04)
I want to be able to give over some of the control to my customers similar to cPanel but you know on the cheap, giving them FTP access and mailboxes etc all accessed from a single server which ever client they are on, but I assume I will have to add webmin/usermin after virtualmin has been installed for these features.
I want to try and create a multi server environment with one "master" server and the rest as clients, I know Virtualmin does some multi server features, firstly is this even possible?
Secondly, as I already have a Database server that I would want to use, and the Running of MySQL on a remote server is possible as per this article https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/database/remote do I just follow the same install process (https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/installation) as I assume the local host still still need to use some MySQL commands even if it's using a remote database server.
Thirdly, do I need dedicated DNS servers with Virtual min? Or are they installed with the standard automated install script?
Finally I am a little confused with this https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/system/faq and the multi server configuration of a standalone mail server, I don't offer mailboxes, instead just setup a mx server to point to gmail, although it's something I would like to offer in the future, is there more information on distributed mail support so I could have a standalone mail server?
Thanks in advance
Howdy,
You can setup certain services to run on different servers. Note that on the main Virtualmin server, you'd perform a normal install using the installation script (install.sh), and then perform the setup described in the articles below.
Instructions for setting up MySQL on a remote database are here:
https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/database/remote
And instructions for setting up SpamAssassin and Clamd are here:
https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/email/spam-av#toc-moving-spam-a...
Virtualmin can work as a DNS server, though it doesn't have to -- that's your choice. If you want to use it as a DNS master server, these here are instructions for setting up slave servers if you wish:
https://www.virtualmin.com/documentation/dns/slave-configuration
Most other services can't be separated though.
For example, there isn't support for running websites on one server, and email on another.
I mean, I suppose you could if you just did two separate Virtualmin installations, and enabled only Apache on one, and only Mail on the other, but they wouldn't know about each other.
-Eric