Congrats on CloudMin !

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#1 Mon, 06/08/2009 - 11:10
beat

Congrats on CloudMin !

Wow, great news guys, congrats!

Looking forward also to see the integration APIs.

Will definitely be buying to try out in next days. Actually only waiting for your server move to complete so that my purchase doesn't get lost in the .... clouds :D

Mon, 06/08/2009 - 18:33
Joe
Joe's picture

Thanks for the kind words, beat! Glad you like the way things are coming along. Still got a long way to go, but the number of urgent issues is decreasing by the hour.

The shop should be working now. I hope, though I'm not entirely sure of that yet. No orders have come in since the move that would issue a license. I'll test it shortly and add an update to the news forum once I've confirmed things are actually working correctly.

We'll also be launching a demo server, and a lot of screenshots and more documentation for Cloudmin in the next couple of days. Baby steps. We're calling it a "soft launch" at the moment.

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Tue, 06/09/2009 - 07:10
beat

Hi Joe, Hi Jamie,

Tried ordering Cloudmin 50 to support you guys and take a look at it, but in Countries list there is only US and Canada, and that will probably raise an alarm at Paypal...

Could you please add other countries, like Switzerland to the worldmap please :D ?

Tue, 06/09/2009 - 17:16 (Reply to #3)
Joe
Joe's picture

Probably fixed now? I didn't even realize that it restricted what countries one could order from. I added them all. Hopefully they all work, and it covers what folks need.

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Tue, 06/09/2009 - 10:47
andreychek

Howdy -- that's a good point :-)

If you don't hear from Joe soon, be sure to mention this in the Bug Tracker so one of those guys can help you out.

Have a good one! -Eric

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 09:49
beat

Hi Joe, Hi Jamie,

Thanks for adding our little country to your list.

I went ahead, and purchased a CLOUDMIN-50 license. :-)

Payment went well.

But now I get:

Order complete

Your order is complete! Your order number is XXXX.

Thank you for shopping at Virtualmin, Inc.. While logged in, you may continue shopping or view your current order status and order history.

Newly purchased products are available for download immediately on the software licenses page. This page is also linked from your account page.

but first link https://www.virtualmin.com/serial gives:

Cloudmin

You have no Cloudmin licenses.

And view your current status order link gives:

Access denied

You are not authorized to access this page.

and the link to /user profile in mail just goes to user profile, don't see license, download link and manual...

HELP :-)

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 10:05 (Reply to #6)
andreychek

Yeah, as you're seeing, there's still a few outstanding issues with the site ;-)

Thanks for your patience, Joe will take care of getting you the info you need once he's up (it's still early in his corner of the world).

I'll ping him to make sure he sees all this.

We'll be in touch! -Eric

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 10:08 (Reply to #7)
beat

Thanks Eric.

Maybe you can help on this one too ? need it quite urgently... :

https://www.virtualmin.com/node/9972

Thanks :)

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 10:15 (Reply to #8)
andreychek

Howdy,

I unfortunately don't have access to the old site ATM.

I shot Joe an email to see if it's lingering around somewhere, so it'll be a race to see who responds first, him or Jamie ;-) -Eric

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 11:03
guyh8

Hello,

I order also cloudmin but the result is : no licence avalaible.... How long have we to wait until its ok ?

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 11:38
beat

Welcome to second customer in here :) Wish thousands soon to Jamie, Joe and team. :)

At least my order and payment worked fine :D , it's "just" the delivery which failed. ;)

Jamie and Joe are usually very fast, when...awake, down there on the other side of Earth :) So my guess is only hours. Well, I hope so, as we're installing another server tonight, and would love to try Cloudmin doing that... :D (hm this forum misses essential emoticons....)

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 12:57 (Reply to #11)
andreychek

There's a bug report on this, and Joe is madly working to get it all straightened out.

The bug report is here:

https://www.virtualmin.com/node/9974

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 17:32
Joe
Joe's picture

So, I figured out the underlying cause of this one, and new orders should work now. beat, I believe your license should now show up at http://www.virtualmin.com/serial

Apologies for the inconvenience, and thanks for giving Cloudmin a try! We've got big plans, and we very much want to hear what you think we can improve, and what new features you'd like to see. New products are a lot of fun, since we have far less concern with backward compatibility and old users expectations...we can be a bit more creative and move faster.

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Wed, 06/10/2009 - 17:53
beat

No worries, Ok, thanks :)

I could download an install.sh and see a serial number in Cloudmin.

I don's see anymore the previously extremely convenient "wget" command to download and install in a single step VIrtualmin... ;)

however, fyi: the other link from the post-payment page:

https://www.virtualmin.com/user/XXXX/order/YYYY

still doesn't work to see order status (still access denied)

Fyi: Also the order confirmation link received by email still says:

Browse to the following page to login to your account and view your order details: https://www.virtualmin.com/user

where there is nothing regarding order ;)

Finally, there is no link to the invoice in a printable form for the accounting, but that can wait a little.

Off to go testing... but hm how ...? :

Any manual around on how to install what and configure .... ? :)

(just posting to help you streamline the process...don't want to be a pain :D )

Wed, 06/10/2009 - 18:06
beat

Small question:

On the license line I see:

Max Instances 50 Max Servers 1

But:

https://www.virtualmin.com/catalog/cloudmin/10 : " Cloudmin 10 Instance Annual License Cloudmin annual (1 year) license for ten guest instances one physical host server using a single virtualization technology. This product can only manage guest instances on a single computer. If you have a single Linux system that you'd like to virtualize quickly and easily, or if you are reselling Cloudmin enabled hosting systems, this is the product for you. "

https://www.virtualmin.com/catalog/cloudmin/50 : " Cloudmin 50 Instance Annual License

Cloudmin annual (1 year) license for management host systems of any type (Linux Xen, Linux vserver, Solaris Zones), and up to a total of 50 guests. This product does not include Virtualmin Professional licenses. "

Reading the 2 descriptions above was under the impression to be able to manage 50 virtual servers (instances) on any number of servers (Opposed to on only one server with the 10 instances license)... We run very few instances per server as we guarantee resources to each instance...but were understanding Cloudmin would allow us to manage coherently multiple instances (and the virtualmin+webmin inside each) on multiple servers accross the board ?

Confused how to understand the license line ?

Fri, 06/12/2009 - 01:42 (Reply to #15)
Joe
Joe's picture

Oops, that one should have been a reply to your message.

In short: Use all the servers you want, but you only need Cloudmin installed on one of them.

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Fri, 06/12/2009 - 01:41
Joe
Joe's picture

Yes, you're right about Cloudmin 50 and servers, but...

You only need one Cloudmin to manage any number of host servers. The 50 instance license can span any number of systems as host systems, and they only need ssh or Webmin (Webmin is better, as it has fast RPC) in order to act as full-featured host systems.

I think maybe the "server" limit is misleading in this case. It really doesn't matter; you only want one server. It wouldn't make sense to have more, because it'd then be uncentralized.

I think we're also going to do away with server limits altogether in Cloudmin, so everything is instance based. It's a bit complicated and confusing, as is.

So, yes, spread your 50 instances across as many servers as you like. Cloudmin won't stop you.

Sorry for the confusion.

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Fri, 06/12/2009 - 02:23 (Reply to #17)
beat

While waiting for the ubuntu installer, just a stupid question by lack of doc.

On which server should we install it ?

Does the Cloudmin server have to run webmin and virtualmin(Pro) too ?

Can the server be a highly secured server behind the "big corporate firewall" ?

Must the server be accessible from the Internet ? if yes on which ports and from where ? Which ports should the server have access to to the Internet and to where ?

Having read the catastrophic (and sadly extremely dramatically ended story) of another central VPS management system this week, we definitely want to make the Cloudmin installation extremely protected as it will be controlling all servers...

Also looking forward to some documentation...to stop bugging you with stupid questions ;)

Thanks for your enlighting :)

Fri, 06/12/2009 - 03:24 (Reply to #18)
Joe
Joe's picture

On which server should we install it ?

Any server you want. It will manage any server it can reach via ssh or Webmin RPC. Cloudmin does not care. Jamie really outdid himself on Cloudmin...it's really quite astonishing some of the things it can do already, though we still have a long way to go before we consider it "finished".

Does the Cloudmin server have to run webmin and virtualmin(Pro) too ?

It is, like Virtualmin, a module of Webmin. So, it has to have Webmin. It's actually quite a bit simpler than Virtualmin, since the stack is dramatically simpler. The RHEL/CentOS installer will setup the Xen kernel, but mostly the install just installs Webmin and Cloudmin and the framed theme. It's much less complicated than Virtualmin. It can be installed manually very easily as well. That's probably something I should document in a hurry, because the meaning of "supported" is much closer to Webmin in Cloudmin, because it is agnostic about almost everything. Put it on pretty much any box with the right Perl modules and Webmin, and it will be happy. You'll have to then point it at boxes with the right kinds of kernel for virtualization, like Xen or vserver or Zones (and soon OpenVZ!).

Can the server be a highly secured server behind the "big corporate firewall" ?

Yes, we think that'd be swell. Though, to really get the most out of it, you'll want it to be accessible to your users as well...possibly just through your own wrapper of the API. Cloudmin is a toolkit for building cloud services...and if your users can't start, stop, re-image, etc. it's only half a cloud service. We're not entirely finished with all of the "user-level" capabilities (live resizing of Xen instances, and a few other niceties aren't in yet, I don't think). ;-)

But, you could have this in your own support UI and make calls to your locked down Cloudmin server from within the private network, if you wanted to. All sorts of possibilities.

Must the server be accessible from the Internet ? if yes on which ports and from where ? Which ports should the server have access to to the Internet and to where ?

Depends on how you use it. If your customers have access (as it is designed for), then they'll need to be able to get to it from the Internet.

Port 10000, just like Virtualmin. Webmin fast RPC needs ports 10001-10010, I think, but only to your other servers, not from outside.

Having read the catastrophic (and sadly extremely dramatically ended story) of another central VPS management system this week, we definitely want to make the Cloudmin installation extremely protected as it will be controlling all servers...

Yes, we're spending a lot of time thinking about this as well. We've occasionally made mistakes over the past 11 years that broke folks data on a small scale, and it is truly heartbreaking when it happens. So, we definitely advise caution moving forward...I don't want to brag, or be negative about LXLabs products at all (security is hard, and we all make mistakes), but I can say that Webmin has a much longer security history, and it's pretty solid. The last serious exploit was over three years ago. Knock on wood, and all.

There are some solutions, but I'm afraid in the very low end hosting environment that was effected in this case, it wouldn't be cost effective. It basically boils down to keeping really good offline backups. I've been talking to a friend who runs tarsnap.com and is a FreeBSD developer and pretty famous security guy about this exact problem (obviously, we're concerned). His service actually can provide protection against this, as well, as it provides the ability to have "write only" backups. That is, you can only write to it, until you give it a read or delete/overwrite key, at which time you can read back out or overwrite or delete the existing data. So, Cloudmin and Virtualmin could be completely unable to read or damage previously backed up data. Adding support for tarsnap is in our plans, but it could be used immediately, if you don't mind getting your hands dirty (at least, I think anyone can sign up for the beta). It's reasonably priced for secure backups, and I trust Colin to get it right, so I'm enthusiastic about tarsnap. I don't know of any other backup service that offers this level of protection, and I can't think of many people who I'd trust to get security right enough to really trust it to be secure.

Docs are coming soon! I'm hoping to launch Cloudmin.com tomorrow as early as possible, and then Eric and I can start importing the old docs.

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Fri, 06/12/2009 - 03:30
Joe
Joe's picture

Btw-Thank you guys for being so patient. The Cloudmin launch (intended to be a soft launch amongst friends at least for the first week or two) turned out to be a bit more crowded than intended, and we're putting out fires, fixing website bugs, and also trying to handle the refugees from HyperVM all at once. We're happy everybody showed up to the party (parties are better with a nice crowd), but we're also not quite sure where to seat everyone or what to feed them. ;-)

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Tue, 06/16/2009 - 11:27
HowardPierce

Hi Joe,

Just feed me some Cloudmin before my HyperVM system (openvz) is hacked and destroyed..

And a beer.

And some pretzels (I love pretzels)

I really hate to do this, but after I get my Cloudmin (yes I crashed your party, I know), is any billing system gearing up to support it?

Thank you

Wed, 06/17/2009 - 00:13 (Reply to #21)
Joe
Joe's picture

Just feed me some Cloudmin before my HyperVM system (openvz) is hacked and destroyed..

Jamie's running as fast as he can on OpenVZ support (which is quite fast indeed, Jamie's a machine when he digs into something).

I really hate to do this, but after I get my Cloudmin (yes I crashed your party, I know), is any billing system gearing up to support it?

Everybody's welcome at the party. We'll just have to deal with the crowd of new folks for a little while until we've gotten to know everybody.

I'm hoping Matt from WHMCS will be the first out of the gate with billing support for Cloudmin. But, his customers will be more able to guide that than we can. We're more than willing to work with him on getting support added (I don't think I've ever heard a single complaint from Virtualmin customers using WHMCS, so we're big fans), but most of the work would be on his end, so we can't do much to make it happen without him. So, if you're a WHMCS customer, and want to use it with Cloudmin, sending a friendly note to Matt would be awesome. ;-)

If you have another favorite billing solution, don't hesitate to mention Cloudmin and Virtualmin to the developer. We will work with anyone that wants to add support to their app. Our API is dead simple to use (just one HTTP request for most actions), and it is very similar across Virtualmin and Cloudmin (so adding both isn't much harder than adding one of them, assuming the billing app already understands a variety of products so it can accomodate both VPS and shared hosting accounts).

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Tue, 06/16/2009 - 11:49
ronald
ronald's picture

whmcs.com is a solid billing system (and more) with already a working module for virtualmin. They know the virtualmin's API and I can imagine a Cloudmin module if more people ask for it. Especially as a replacement for HyperVM

Tue, 06/16/2009 - 14:23
MACscr

yes, im interested in using cloudmin with whmcs as well. I really need to pay with cloudmin before i will buy it though. It amazes me how many orders you guys have received without anyone playing with a demo, trial, or even really screenshots.

Tue, 06/16/2009 - 21:46 (Reply to #24)
Joe
Joe's picture

It amazes me how many orders you guys have received without anyone playing with a demo, trial, or even really screenshots

Yeah, we're surprised, too. But, it's not like folks don't know who we are, or whether our software is solid. We have been at this web-based systems management business for nearly 12 years now (Webmin will be 12 in October). We'll be around for a long time to come, and we don't build shoddy products. We also fix problems fast. And, I guess the 45 day money back guarantee doesn't hurt, either.

So, anyway, for folks that don't know us and just trust that the software we build is gonna be awesome, there will be a demo and a lot more information in a day or two. Eric and I are working on the docs right now, and I'm hoping to post an introductory screencast sometime tomorrow, as well. Jamie is still working on OpenVZ support, and we expect it to wrap up soon. He was able to put in quite a bit of work on the weekend, but I'm not sure how much more work is needed.

We don't know yet whether Matt at WHMCS will be working with us on getting Cloudmin supported, but we'd certainly be happy to see if happen. We've heard nothing but good things about Matt and his product, so we think it'd be great to see it working with Cloudmin, too. So, for anybody that's a WHMCS customer, and you also want to see Cloudmin support, you might mention us to him. I assume he builds what his customers want to buy. ;-)

On a related note, we're hoping to get LXAdmin/Kloxo migration built into Virtualmin 3.70.

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