Create a private cloud inside a VPS (Proxmox alternative)
By Sergsoares |
| 5 minutes
It is great to have a private cloud to create virtual machines and validate ideas for applications and infrastructure.
With Home Lab, we can use great projects like Proxmox, for most VPS providers, there is not an official image that can be used (beside it can be imported).
For those who, like me, want to create and destroy a lot of VMs that are used for several weeks in labs, the following tutorial provides an alternative using LXD and LXDware:
Requirements:
VM with support for KVM
4GB or more of RAM
Debian 12 (OS that will be used)
Glossary:
VM (a virtual machine created by LXD)
server (where we will run the LXD daemon)
local (computer that will be used to SSH inside server)
LXD (is the daemon of LinuX Containers)
LXC (is the command line for manage LinuX Containers Daemon)
Prepare the server
Create a VPS (or use a bare metal server) of your choice, I will use a droplet in Digital Ocean with Debian 12.
Then ssh in it and check that KVM is working, then using kvm-ok we can validate if server support KVM:
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root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# apt update
root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# apt install -y cpu-checker
root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# kvm-ok
INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used
We need to initialize lxd server, we will use all default configuration in that step.
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root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# lxd init
Would you like to use LXD clustering? (yes/no)[default=no]:
Do you want to configure a new storage pool? (yes/no)[default=yes]:
Name of the new storage pool [default=default]:
Would you like to connect to a MAAS server? (yes/no)[default=no]:
Would you like to create a new local network bridge? (yes/no)[default=yes]:
What should the new bridge be called? [default=lxdbr0]:
What IPv4 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”)[default=auto]:
What IPv6 address should be used? (CIDR subnet notation, “auto” or “none”)[default=auto]:
Would you like the LXD server to be available over the network? (yes/no)[default=no]:
Would you like stale cached images to be updated automatically? (yes/no)[default=yes]:
Would you like a YAML "lxd init" preseed to be printed? (yes/no)[default=no]:
Run the first LXC VM to validate that it is working
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root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# lxc launch images:ubuntu/22.04/cloud vm01 --vm
If this is your first time running LXD on this machine, you should also run: lxd init
Creating ubuntu-vm
Retrieving image: rootfs: 50% (37.10MB/s)Creating vm01
Starting vm01
Install LXDware
Let’s install LXDware using a docker running inside a little VM.
root@lxdware:~# docker run -d --name dashboard -p 8000:80 -v ~/lxdware:/var/lxdware --restart=always lxdware/dashboard:3.8.0
# Then check that everything is ok inside the lxdware VMroot@lxdware:~# docker ps
Access the VM’s like a local network
For that, we will use sshuttle that allow we to forward a CIDR acting like we are inside our host and access through secure SSH connection.
Lets discover which is the CIDR inside the server that host has access that we want access (if you changed default bridge change inside script):
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root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# ip route | grep lxdbr0 | awk '{print $1}'10.254.155.0/24
With the CIDR we will create a command to forward traffic from our host to vm (passing by the server):
Example using the ephemeral droplet that I created (Connected to server means success):
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sergsoares-personal ~> sudo sshuttle --dns -NHr root@164.90.157.217 10.254.155.0/24
Password:
The authenticity of host '164.90.157.217 (164.90.157.217)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:jWmcSw1VHy/dMGQret7ewcaKlyMIixnLRbCGlJIGPlU.
This key is not known by any other names
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])? yes
Warning: Permanently added '164.90.157.217' (ED25519) to the list of known hosts.
c : Connected to server.
HH: ['netstat', '-n'] failed: FileNotFoundError(2, 'No such file or directory')
Now let’s discover inside server the IP for LXDware vm
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root@debian-s-2vcpu-4gb-sfo3-01:~# lxc list
+---------+---------+------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+
| NAME | STATE | IPV4 | IPV6 | TYPE | SNAPSHOTS |+---------+---------+------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+
| lxdware | RUNNING | 172.17.0.1 (docker0)| fd42:3898:ac14:5e8c:216:3eff:fe1a:6b53 (enp5s0)| VIRTUAL-MACHINE |0|||| 10.254.155.66 (enp5s0)||||+---------+---------+------------------------+-------------------------------------------------+-----------------+-----------+
And with the IP and the sshuttle tunnel we can access, in our case http://10.254.155.66:8000/
Configure LXDware:
After access LXDware and create a user and password and made the login:
And the main console will appear:
Now let’s add a new host for LXDware, and click in “here” link:
Now for allowing LXDware to manage LXD server, we need to add the LXDware certificate to LXDServer that will be provided in the next screen:
For example, It can be done with the following commands (substitute the .crt content or create lxdware.crt by hand).
