Running multiple VM's on one Server

[Pazza]

Hi all,

been looking around but can't seem to find a definitive answer.

Here's what I want to do:

I have a ProLiant ML 310 G5, 2x network cards, will be upping the RAM to 5GB, 2x 250gb drives on raid, will be installing 2x 2GB drives on raid for storage.

I want to Run Multiple VM servers on the one physical server! Adding more when necessary.

I want to start with 1x VM runing Home Server 2011 and 2x VM's running SBS 2011 to host website/exchange based on the domain name (both will be low-volume usage) - i.e. all traffic for one.com goes to serverone, and two.com goes to servertwo.

I am looking at VMWARE ESXi to host the servers and create multiple VM's within ESXi - all fine up to now I think?

But, as I am runing on one external IP address, how can I direct web traffic/mail for one.com to serverone and two.com to servertwo (including sub-domains)? Do I need a DSN server running also?

This is purely for research purposes and not commercial.

[b0redom]

I have a ProLiant ML 350 G5, 2x network cards, will be upping the RAM to 5GB, 2x 250gb drives on raid, will be installing 2x 2GB drives on raid for storage.

I want to Run Multiple VM servers on the one physical server! Adding more when necessary.

I want to start with 1x VM runing Home Server 2011 and 2x VM's running SBS 2011 to host website/exchange based on the domain name (both will be low-volume usage) - i.e. all traffic for one.com goes to serverone, and two.com goes to servertwo.

I am looking at VMWARE ESXi to host the servers and create multiple VM's within ESXi - all fine up to now I think?

Yep.

But, as I am runing on one external IP address, how can I direct web traffic/mail for one.com to serverone and two.com to servertwo (including sub-domains)? Do I need a DSN server running also?

This is purely for research purposes and not commercial.

I presume that this is not directly connected to the Internet - ie you're running this at home behind some sort of router/firewall. Assuming that this is the case, you give each VM its own IP address, and yes, you set up DNS to point www.one.com at VM1 and www.two.com to VM2.

If you are looking to have these accessible from outside, things start to get a lot more complicated as you'll actually need to register the DNS records and have someone host at least one of them for you.

If this is just a learning process, I would look at doing this all in isolation from Internet until you're way more confident, as you can get into a big mess very quickly otherwise.

[b0redom]

Oh, and if you were thinking of having this server in a datacentre directly attached to the Internet, that is a VERY bad idea.

Usually at the most insecure implementation, this sort of set up would require 2 interfaces, one facing outwards which would be where the VMs send their web traffic, and one management address facing inwards on a management network which can only be accessed by VPN or similar, which you would send your management traffic over (VMWare console http traffic, AD traffic etc).

There are usually extra firewalls etc in the mix to prevent naughty people doing nasty things.

[Pazza]

Thanks for the initial info. Yes, forgot to mention that the server will be running behind a Draytek Vigor 2910 router. Quite a simple setup I know, but just want to prove it works for now.

And yes, I do want to open one.com and two.com to the internet for testing purposes. I already have the domain names, and I have 1x fixed IP address, so I somehow need to direct all traffic from one.com to serverone (assigned local IP address of, let's say 192.168.10.1) and two.com to 192.168.10.2) - both incomming on the same IP address! Naughty, I know - but this is all I have to work with at the moment for testing.

So, traffic comes in, I assume I direct the usual ports to ??? which will filter/direct mail and web requests etc.. to the relevant local IP address of the relevant server. it's the ??? setup bit I am unsure of at the moment.

Once the concept works, I will then look deeper into security aspect.

[Pazza]

p.s. the hosting company can route all traffic to the one IP address - no issue here, but it's the splitting of traffic once hit my exteral IP address to the desired server is where I am struggling to sort out.

[blueball]

p.s. the hosting company can route all traffic to the one IP address - no issue here, but it's the splitting of traffic once hit my exteral IP address to the desired server is where I am struggling to sort out.

I'd be intrigued to see how you do that too. Other than using different ports I can only think of doing it with one external IP per domain.

[Pazza]

Yes Blueball, I know it can be done, but just not sure how. I assume a dedicated DNS sever or something, but this is where I want a little insight.

[madman045]

SBS 2011 has a minimal memory requirement of 8GB and the OS partition of 120GB, so your looking at 16GB and 240GB just with those two VM's
I have SBS 2011 running on my ESXI 4.1 box and it idle's using 8GB, most would recommend 12-16GB

From the datacentre side, to have a working scenerio of incoming mail flow, remote access etc.. you will need multiple external IP addresses and then with the Draytek, port forward the required ports to each server with its own dedicated IP.

[OilSheikh]

To have different subnets , leading to diff IP addresses for both servers.

Use VMWARE to host one set of VM's and a VIRTUALBOX to host another set of VM's

[b0redom]

Well, you CAN do it on the same port, but it's a bit ugly. Your choices are to do something like:

www.one.com : 80 (standard HTTP) and have your Draytek map it to 192.168.10.1
www.two.com : 81 and have your Draytek map it to 192.168.10.2 on port 80

This would handle the case where someone externally accesses to http://www.two.com:81 externally, but not internally. Internally you'd need to do something like set up a port redirection in your web server so that all traffic bound for port 81 on 192.168.10.2 81 goes to 192.168.10.2:80.

A slightly more elegant way is to make (lets say) 192.168.10.1 a 'master' server so all traffic is passed directly to that via your Draytek and the server software on that host is then configured to pass traffic bound for www.two.com to 192.168.10.2 if necessary. For Apache HTTP you could use something like the ProxyPass directive - IIS/SBS must have something similar.

Again this is a bit ugly though because if 192.168.10.1 goes away or is down, 192.168.10.2 doesn't receive any traffic.

If you were to put a dedicated reverse proxy VM in front of 192.168.10.1|2 you'd still have the same single point of failure.

In short if what you want to do is have:

www.one.com map to 192.168.10.1
www.two.com map to 192.168.10.2

The only way to do it is to have 2 external IP addresses and a router which will support passthough of IP addresses.

I have no idea if your Draytek will do that.

[b0redom]

To have different subnets , leading to diff IP addresses for both servers.

Use VMWARE to host one set of VM's and a VIRTUALBOX to host another set of VM's

You can't do this with ESXi, it's a bare metal hypervisor. ESXi can have different subnets (on different NICs), but you're still scuppered because the PAT stuff needs to be done at the Draytek layer.

[spoon_]

p.s. the hosting company can route all traffic to the one IP address - no issue here, but it's the splitting of traffic once hit my exteral IP address to the desired server is where I am struggling to sort out.

Which kind of traffic to you want to split? If it's web traffic you most likely want to use DMZ and then forward it to your LAN on selected ports ONLY. DMZ servers should handle any authentication and simple pass on the request like SQL or web to the internal network.

[b0redom]

Seems this one can:

http://cambridge-networks.co.uk/supp...ek-2910vg.html

"Support for non-NAT public subnets (multiple public IP addresses)"

You wouldn't need to set up NAT on that, just give the VMs real IP addresses and only allow the access to the services you want via the firewall. If you DO go down this route, be VERY careful about exposing RDP etc.

[spoon_]

You can't do this with ESXi, it's a bare metal hypervisor. ESXi can have different subnets (on different NICs), but you're still scuppered because the PAT stuff needs to be done at the Draytek layer.

VirtualBox needs an OS to run, there is nothing wrong with using Windows that sits on ESXi to install it but performance might suck...

[Pazza]

Thanks all for so far...

I know it's easy with multiple external IP addresses - but without going into too much detail, private customers cannot get multiple fixed IP addresses, only the one fixed for the normal connection (they say it's not fixed, but it's been the same now for several years).

The DMZ solution might be useful if I can get a little more insight into how this would work??

so, certain things are fixed and will not change, such as one external IP address. all traffic to go through the router/firewall. Server will run ESXi. I have a technet subscription so SBS server options are available.

setting up the servers is not a problem, just the bloomin' routing. I though I needed a DNS server to do this, but maybe DMZ?

[Lucio]

Stupid question time, could you not handle it in a similar way to WMS/cPanel does? So you have one internet facing server, that then redirects the traffic internally, depending on what domain name is typed in.

For example, someone types in www.one.com, so the server routes that to the first IP, if they type in www.two.com and thus is routes to the second IP. Your internet facing server is a VM that is solely there to re-route the traffic.

IIRC, I think it's a 301 redirect, only you're routing it to an internal IP, instead of an external IP.