How to Create VPS out of Physical Server – Step by Step Guide

This tutorial will guide you how to install and configure your own VPS (virtual private server) machine on a physical Linux server. As a common practice, the physical server comes up with the minimum Operating System installed on it. Try to order a server with Centos 5 or the latest version.

We assume that you have a server with Centos 6 minimal operating system on it. We will be using OpenVZ for virtualization to create virtual servers. The server machine should have at least 2 Gbs or better memory to handle the virtual machines on it. The machine with more memory and CPU can handle more virtual servers on it. Typically the server is sliced on the bases of the memory installed on it. For example a server machine with 16 GBs of RAM could be sliced upto 8 to 16 virtual boxes.

OpenVZ is free under the GNU open-source license. It is a container based virtualization system, where each container executes separately and independently of the Linux box with its own file system and control management system. OpenVZ is widely used by the VPS companies to share the memory and other resources economically .

 

Step 1: Adding Repository

First of all we will add the OpenVZ repository to our physical machine to install the important software’s.

 wget -P /etc/yum.repos.d/ https://ftp.openvz.org/openvz.repo

rpm –import https://ftp.openvz.org/RPM-GPG-Key-OpenVZ

 

Step 2: Installation of OpenVZ Kernel

Install a the OpenVZ kernel to support virtual boxes using the repository.

yum install vzkernel

 

Step 3: Kernel Configuration

Configure kernel parameters to support virtualization by editing the sysct.conf file.

i /etc/sysctl.conf

# On Hardware Node we generally need

# packet forwarding enabled and proxy arp disabled

net.ipv4.ip_forward = 1

net.ipv6.conf.default.forwarding = 1

net.ipv6.conf.all.forwarding = 1

net.ipv4.conf.default.proxy_arp = 0

# Enables source route verification

net.ipv4.conf.all.rp_filter = 1

# Enables the magic-sysrq key

kernel.sysrq = 1

# We do not want all our interfaces to send redirects

net.ipv4.conf.default.send_redirects = 1

net.ipv4.conf.all.send_redirects = 0

We will disable Selinux to avoid any surprises.

vi /etc/sysconfig/selinux

“SELINUX=disabled”

Install necessary OpenVZ tools via yum before rebooting the machine.

yum install vzctl vzquota ploop

Reboot the machine to load OpenVZ kernel

Now you have loaded the virtualization environment, you are ready to create virtual machines.

Download the ready-made templates from the OpenVZ repository to create the virtual machines. You can download the precreated OS templates from download.openvz.org/template/precreated the path to templates:

cd /vz/template/cache/

Lets download centos 6 template

wget https://download.openvz.org/template/precreated/centos-6-x86_64-minimal.tar.gz

Step 4: Create Our First VPS

 we will use the below command to create our first virtual machine.

 vzctl create [ID number] –ostemplate [template name] –config basic

 

ID number : any number from 1- 100

ostemplate: Precreated Operating system

template name: The name of downloaded precreted OS template

config: give the configuration file name

 

OpenVZ comes up with sample configuration files to give you a kick-start found in /etc/vz/conf

You can use basic , bight or unlimited sample configuration to create your first virtual machine.

 

We will use basic configuration to create our first container.

vzctlcreate 123 –ostemplate centos-6-x86 –config basic

 

Step 5: Necessary VPS Configuration

Now we will configure the virtual server for necessary settings to make it online.

Configure the VPS

Give a name to the virtual machine.

vzctl set 123 –hostname vps1.linuxbox.com –save

Give it an IP address

vzctl set 123 –ipadd 33.54.2.2 –save

Set the VPS to become online automagically on the reboot:

vzctl set 123 –onboot yes –save

It is important to add working name server to to make it online:

vzctl set 123 –nameserver 8.8.8.8 –save

vzctl set 123 –nameserver 8.8.4.4—save

Here we go, we are almost ready to take our newly created VPS online.

 

Assign Root Password to the machine.

vzctl exec 123 passwd

You will be prompted to set the root password.

 

Start OpenVZ VPS

We will run the below command to start our VPS:

vzlist -a  It will list down the number of virtual machines

vzctl start 123

 

Installation of Cpanel on Newly Created VPS

 Since the new container has the precreated Centos OS 6. We will install cpanel on the virtual machine.

Login to the machine:

vzctl enter 123

Enter the root password to log in.

cd /root

 wget -N https://httpsupdate.cpanel.net/latest

 sh latest & it will take some time to complete. Once the cpanel is installed, you can access it using the Ip address and the port.

Http://youripadress:2086 , https://yourip/whm , https://yourip/whm

Voila, we are ready with our first virtual private server. You can create more vps using the same processes.

 

Some Helpful Commands

vzlist -a   (list all virtual servers)

vzlist start/stop/restart ID ( start/stop/restart a server)

vzctl set [ID] –diskspace [soft limit]:[hard limit] (change disk space)

vzctl set [ID] –cpulimit 4 –save ( assign cpu cores)

vzctl destroy CTID ( destroy/delete the virtual machine)

 

Rounak Jain

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