Skip to Main Content

Virtualizing Liferay Portal with Proxmox VE

Some days ago I had to deploy a Liferay Portal in a hosting provider where Proxmox Virtual Environment (PVE) was necessary to use.

What is Proxmox Virtual Environment?

Proxmox Virtual Environment is a Debian distro with pre-installed packages ready to use when you want to create virtualization platform for running Virtual Appliances and Virtual Machines based on OpenVZ and KVM.

But, What is difference between tradicional hosting and hosting based on Proxmox VE?, really does not exist differences because with Proxmox VE you can virtualize all (network, server, vlan, etc.).

Then, I did create a virtualized network with 2 servers based on Proxmox, the first server runs a Linux Debian with Apache HTTP server as web-proxy, the second server will be a private server with Liferay Portal.

1. Installation first server with Proxmox / Apache2 HTTP Server (In Host)

When installing Proxmox in your hosting provider you will have as principal public server a first server with Debian Linux,
its initial configuration is as follow:

root@kns ~ # nano /etc/network/interfaces

### Hetzner Online AG - installimage
# Loopback device:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# device: eth0
auto  eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address   176.9.30.36
  broadcast 176.9.30.63
  netmask   255.255.255.224
  gateway   176.9.30.33
  pointopoint 176.9.30.33
  post-up mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth0

# default route to access subnet
up route add -net 176.9.30.32 netmask 255.255.255.224 gw 176.9.30.33 eth0
root@kns ~ # more /etc/resolv.conf

search
nameserver 213.133.100.100
nameserver 213.133.98.98
nameserver 213.133.99.99

After of installing Proxmox, you have to create virtual network with a private IP range, in this case I will use 10.10.10.x.

1.1. Creating Virtual Network with Proxmox

root@kns ~ # nano /etc/network/interfaces

# Loopback device:
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback

# device: eth0
auto  eth0
iface eth0 inet static
  address   176.9.30.36
  broadcast 176.9.30.63
  netmask   255.255.255.224
  gateway   176.9.30.33
  pointopoint 176.9.30.33
  post-up mii-tool -F 100baseTx-FD eth0
  post-up echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/conf/eth0/proxy_arp

#### my new virtual network
auto vmbr0
iface vmbr0 inet static
    address  10.10.10.1
    netmask  255.255.255.0
    bridge_ports none
    bridge_stp off
    bridge_fd 0
    post-up echo 1 > /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
    post-up iptables -t nat -A POSTROUTING -s '10.10.10.0/24' -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
    post-down iptables -t nat -D POSTROUTING -s '10.10.10.0/24' -o eth0 -j MASQUERADE
root@kns ~ # nano /etc/sysctl.d/10-no-icmp-redirects.conf

#### my bridge to VM
net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0
root@kns ~ # nano /etc/sysctl.conf

### Hetzner Online AG installimage
# sysctl config
net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter=1
net.ipv4.icmp_echo_ignore_broadcasts=1
net.ipv4.ip_forward=1

2. Installation of second server with Liferay 6.0.6 CE (a Guest VM)

2.1. Install your prefered Linux distro in your new VM

With Proxmox VE is easy and quickly to create VM from ISO image.
You can change VM parameters as RAM, HD, type of Network interface, MAC, etc. all from Proxmox VE web interface, or if you know Proxmox’s commands you could do from SSH terminal.

2.2. Configure eth0 in Guest

After of creating your VM with Proxmox, you will need to asign private IP or customize your VM, in this case you will need a VNC terminal to apply these changes.
With Proxmox you can get a shell/terminal to Guest VM without connection to virtualized network.

Then, from Proxmox VE (interface web) go to your recently VM created and open a VNC terminal, then here runs following commands:

[root@pisco ~]# nano /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

DEVICE="eth0"
NM_CONTROLLED="yes"
ONBOOT=yes
HWADDR=3E:DB:61:48:63:88
TYPE=Ethernet
BOOTPROTO=none
IPADDR=10.10.10.12
PREFIX=24
GATEWAY=10.10.10.1
DNS1=213.133.99.99
DEFROUTE=yes
IPV4_FAILURE_FATAL=yes
IPV6INIT=no
NAME="System eth0"
UUID=5fb06bd0-0bb0-7ffb-45f1-d6edd65f3e03
[root@pisco ~]# more /etc/resolv.conf

search local
nameserver 213.133.99.99

…add gateway

[root@pisco ~]# ip route add 176.9.30.36 dev eth0

..add default path

[root@pisco ~]# ip route add default via 176.9.30.36

2.3. Re-start VM and test configuration

[root@pisco ~]# ping www.google.com

PING www.l.google.com (74.125.39.103) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from fx-in-f103.1e100.net (74.125.39.103): icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=6.77 ms
64 bytes from fx-in-f103.1e100.net (74.125.39.103): icmp_seq=2 ttl=53 time=6.81 ms

2.4. Install Liferay, then move Liferay to non-root context

Liferay will be running with this URL: http://10.10.10.12:8080/kns

3. Move Proxmox Virtual Environment 1.9 (proxmox’s website) from 80 port to 8080 port.

Next blog post.

4. Configure first server as Reverse Web Proxy

Next blog post.

5. Test installation

From Internet you can call this URL: http://myliferay.intix.info/knshttp://176.9.30.36/kns or http://${YOUR-PUBLIC-IP}/kns

Bye.

References

  • Proxmox – Network model: http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Network_Model