Tag: Proxmox

Technology

Who’s got the biggest load average?

Ever wondered what can be the highest load average on the unix-like system? Do we even know what this parameter tells about? It shows the average number of either actively running or waiting processes. It should be close to the number of logical processors present on the system, otherwise, in case it is greater than this, some things will need to wait in order to be executed. So I was testing 1000 LXC containers on the 2 x 6 core Xeon system (totalling as 24 logical processors) and leave it for a while. Once I got back I saw that

Technology

Use Packer & Terraform to generate Ubuntu 22.04-4 server image and deploy it automatically to Proxmox

If you wonder how to automate Ubuntu virtual machine creation and then deploy it to Proxmox in multple copies, then you are looking for Packer and Terraform. Side note: going for virtual machines in Proxmox is the proper way. I tried for several days to have LXC containers working, however finally I will say that it is not the best option with lot of things going bad like cgroups, AppArmor, nesting, FUSE, ingress networking etc. There is literally too much to handle with LXC and with VM there is no such problem, so discussion end here in favour of Proxmox

Security

NIS 2: anti-rootkit & anti-virus installation and scanning with Ansible

If you run digital services platform or critical infrastructure then most probably you are covered by NIS 2 and its requirements including those concerning information security. Even if you are not covered by NIS 2, then still you may benefit from its regulations which seem to be similar with those coming from ISO 27001. In this article I show how to automatically deploy anti-rootkit and anti-virus software for your Linux workstations and servers. TLDR By using rkhunter anti-rootkit and ClamAV anti-virus you are closer to NIS 2 and ISO 27001 and farther away from threats like cryptocurrency miners and ransomware.

Technology

Private cloud for 50€ (Hetzner, Proxmox, pfSense, HAProxy, Docker Swarm, Portainer, Suricata, PBS)

Create secure, high-performance, affordable environment for your container applications using Hetzner dedicated servers.For around 50€ per month. This setup can also be done using different server providers, both dedicated and shared, even on public cloud. This tutorial has not been sponsored by Hetzner or any other software vendors. If you are interested in similar setup, please drop me a message via Linkedin. Goal The goal for this setup is to run Docker container in Swarm mode in secure and reliable environment. For sake of security we enable Proxmox firewall, pfSense firewall and Suricata IDS/IPS. For sake of reliability we configure

Security

Encrypt with LUKS an unencrypted LVM Ubuntu 22 Server without system reinstallation

Keep your data safe. Device loss or unauthorized access can be mitigated by encrypting drive in your server and workstation. So you may have a Ubuntu Linux installation on your bare metal or virtual machine. Does it have an encrypted drive? If the answer is no, then you could be in trouble when device is stolen or lost, or someone just gained unauthorized access to your hardware. In this short step-by-step article you can see what steps your should take to encrypt your unencrypted drives without need to reinstall the system. When speaking workstation, there is much less concern about

Security

External and redundand Azure VM backups with Veeam to remote site

Backup is a must. Primary hardware fails. Local backups can also fail or can be inaccessible. Remote backups can also fail, but if you have 2, 3 or even more backup copies in different places and on various medium chances are high enough that you will survive major incidents without data loss or too much of being offline. Talking about Microsoft Azure public cloud platform. But in case of any infrastructure environment you should have working and verified backup tools. Azure has its own. To keep those backups in secure remote place (in the context of Storage Account) you can

Security

Recovering Proxmox VM from failed HDD

Due to previous failure of SSD drive from Goodram I was forced to use brand new 1TB HDD from Toshiba. It was not a problem because the system running on it mainly have been using writes with not too much reads. My SSD drive had some performance drops which could be because of the fact being run out of the same power socket shared with some DIY tools in garage. Now there is no power socket sharing I think that I may close server lid with too much force, so even brand new HDD failed. Proxmox reported failure of disk

Technology

Nested virtualization on Proxmox 7.4

If you would like to run virtual machine inside another virtual machine, then you need to have CPU with nested virtualization feature and this feature needs to be enabled. Even if enabled: you might still have error on enabling virtualization inside virtual machine: Still, even with “KVM hardware virtualization” set to Yes on VM Options pane in Proxmox UI, you may have trouble to get it to work. In case of Intel Xeon Gold 5412U there are no additional CPU flags available to set from Proxmox UI. You need to select CPU type as “host” either from UI or inside