Proxmox Mail Gateway in container

The Proxmox Mail Gateway 2.1 template is an OpenVZ OS template that allows you to run the Antispam & Antivirus Mail Gateway. Proxmox runs in different virtualization environments but in OpenVZ it is almost twice as fast as with full virtualization - due to the minimal overhead. Proxmox offers free and commercial licenses.

Prerequisites

I assume you have already a running OpenVZ server. This HowTo is based on an fresh Centos 4.4 installation with OpenVZ kernel 2.6.9 but should also work with all other combinations. I used a Dual Xeon with 2 GB Ram.

Installation

Download the Proxmox OpenVZ template:

wget http://www.proxmox.com/cms_proxmox/cms/upload/bittorrent/debian-4.0-proxmox-mailgateway-2.1.tar.gz

Copy the template into the template cache, usually to /vz/templates/cache/

Create a default config

Create a reasonable default config if you don’t have one. The following command creates the file /etc/vz/conf/ve-default.conf-sample which contains reasonable defaults if you plan to run 5 VEs:

vzsplit -n 5 -f default

Create a VE

Choose a free VE ID, we use 777 for this guide.

vzctl create 777 --ostemplate debian-4.0-proxmox-mailgateway-2.1 --config default

Configure the VE

Set IP Address and DNS nameservers, start servers automatically at boot time: please adapt these settings to your environment.

vzctl set 777 --onboot yes --ipadd 192.168.2.110 \
 --nameserver 192.168.2.100 --nameserver 192.168.2.101 \
 --hostname proxmox --searchdomain yourdomain.tld --save

Set guaranteed memory to 512MB, maximum disk space to 4GB.

vzctl set 777 --vmguarpages 512M:unlimited --privvmpages 1G:1100M --diskspace 4000M:4400M --save

Start the VE

vzctl start 777

And finally set the root password:

vzctl set 777 --userpasswd root:YOURPASSWORT

Now you have a running Proxmox! By typing vzlist you should have something like this.

[root@vz1 ~]# vzlist
      VEID      NPROC STATUS  IP_ADDR         HOSTNAME
       777         56 running 192.168.2.110   proxmox
[root@vz1 ~]#

Backup considerations, live migration, and HA Cluster

The Proxmox HA Cluster consists of a master and several nodes (minimum one node) - All can be run on different OpenVZ servers within the same subnet. Configuration is done on the master, all configuration and data is synchronized to all cluster nodes over a VPN tunnel.

For online backups, see Backup_of_a_running_VE_with_vzdump

Live migration: see Checkpointing_and_live_migration

For HA Cluster, see http://www.proxmox.com/cms_proxmox/en/technology/proxmox-ha-cluster/

Proxmox configuration

For the Proxmox configuration point your web browser to the given IP address.

More information on http://www.proxmox.com/