vm – Hi, I'm Vignesh

If you ever wanted to setup a VPN server, mail server, mail box, web server, or nextcloud (an open source google drive alternative), then you can go through this blog and set it up in minutes using NethServer.

NethServer new management web UI at 9090 port

Since AWS does not provide a NethServer AMI by default via MarketPlace or Community AMI, I had to make a VM image in my local server, modify it, import it to AWS and then modify it again and make it working for AWS.

I have made that image public and it is available in the Mumbai region. If you need it in any other region, contact me or you can make an AMI after launching the server in the Mumbai region and transfer it to whichever region you like.

So to setup a NethServer in AWS, below are the steps you have to follow

Setting up EC2

The instance

Go to the AWS EC2 console and click on Launch Instance

There go to Community AMIs and search for NethServer or you can search the below AMI ID. Do note that this AMI ID might change if I update the AMI

ami-0c0dc2c9b42edfa60

Security group rules

The security group should allow the following as per requirement for accessing the server

For the latest management web UI, open the port 9090 inbound

For old management web UI, open port 980 inbound

For SSH Access, open port 22 inbound

You can keep outbound access as full open for all traffic.

User Access

The NethServer AMI by default comes with a user. The details are as follows

Username: admin
Password: Nethserver@123

Domain/Other details

By default, this AMI comes with the FQDN ami.vigneshn.in

This can be changed and there are also my contact details in the Company name space so you can change it according to your requirements.

Also note that you have to change the FQDN before you install LDAP in account providers (Users and Groups).

You can also use Active directory (external) for user and group management.

Also you need to setup LDAP to change the password of the default admin user

Known caveats

Currently there is an issue with Nethserver where it requrires a green interface at any cost, without which it will throw and error at ipconf step.

To fix this, create a network interface in AWS and attach it to the instance.

Make this a green network and if your ip is 172.20.20.20 for the network interface, then give that as static in for green and the subnet mask as 255.255.255.0 and the gateway as 172.20.20.1

Documentation

For more details on how to set up the individual services in NethServer, you can visit the NethServer documentation here.

If you are trying to setup virtual machines in a CentOS 8 server, the following are the steps.

I set this up in AWS with an m5d.metal instance (only metal instances allow direct hardware access in AWS. AWS does not support nested virtualization) but it is the same for any CentOS 8 server.

Once you get the server up and running, check if your hardware supports virtualization. If it is a new machine with a recent processor, it should support it but just check it just in case.

grep -E '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo
lsmod | grep -i kvm

Now we install the X-Org server so that you can access the virt-manager GUI in the server on your local machine.

sudo yum install xorg-x11-xauth xorg-x11-fonts-* xorg-x11-utils

Now install all the required packages required for virtualization

sudo yum groupinstall "Virtualization Host"

Once the installation is complete, check the status of libvirtd service which is required to run the virtual machine.

sudo systemctl status libvirtd

If it is not running, then run the following command to start the service

sudo systemctl start libvirtd

Remember to enable the service so that the service starts up automatically after reboot

sudo systemctl enable libvirtd

In the current situation, only root can connect to the libvirtd daemon to create VMs but since we are planning to use the GUI and not the virt-install command line tool, it will be better to add the user to the libvirt group. This is because root doesn’t play will with X-Org server.

sudo usermod -aG libvirt centos

Now you have to log off and log in.

You can run the following command to kill all the process by the user (here it is centos) which will basically log you out.

sudo pkill -U centos

You can log back in with the -X option so that when you run the virt-manager, you can see it in your local machine.

ssh -i key.pem -X centos@IP

Once you have logged in, check if you are there in the libvirt group by running the following command.

groups

Confirm that the installation of packages was completed successfull by running the following command.

sudo virsh version

Once all that is done, you can run the following command to start the GUI Virtual machine manager.

virt-manager

That’s it. You may now setup virtual machines in the server using the same steps you have been following till now with Virtual machine manager.