Unlimited VPS servers With Artica for free

Artica v 1.5.050514 is able to create VPS servers on an Artica server.

This feature provides a real benefit

Divide the server on "services"
Testing / QA
backup
Low overhead. LXC uses minimal resources in terms of RAM and hard drive space without the overhead of installing a guest OS in a virtual machine ( VMWare / VirtualBox / KVM ) .
Applications and services (servers) run at native speed.
No special hardware is required, runs on 32 and 64 bit processors.
Unlike XEN or OpenVZ , no patch is required to the kernel

To provide VPS server, Artica use the latest technology used by the LXC project

LXC is the userspace control package for Linux Containers, a lightweight virtual system mechanism sometimes described as “chroot on steroids”.
LXC builds up from chroot to implement complete virtual systems, adding resource management and isolation mechanisms to Linux’s existing process management infrastructure.

Take a look of "virtualization comparatives"

But, using this "native" technology did not allow installing other systems like "Windows" or "MAC"

You need at least a kernel version 2.6.26 so if you running Artica on a CentOS 5.4,5.5 (the RedHat sister) your are a bad guy and close this topic, this is not for your server....

If you running Artica on Debian or Ubuntu this topic is for you (in next releases we plan to implement Open SuSe or Fedora).

Installing LXC

You can use the setup Center to do this task or you can wait few times, Artica will synchronize packages after upgrade it's version

if you did not want to wait, go into the setup Center and click on "Synchronize Softwares" and wait few times

Or run this command line

/usr/share/artica-postfix/bin/setup-ubuntu --check-base-system

Go into the "System Softwares" section and click on install/Upgrade under the "LXC containers"

When LXC is installed, click on "Cache" on the top menu in order to refresh the left menu.

Enable the VPS service and Configuring network

On the left menu, click on "Virtual Machines" / "VPS servers"
Select the "Parameters" tab
Check "Enable this service" checkbox.
Choose the NIC that will be able to store containers networks (it will install a bridge to able to communicate with your VPS servers).
Click on "Apply" button

After few seconds, the form will turn to locked, which is normal because the NIC has been modified with a bridge.

To return back to older network, you need to "Uninstall" the bridge

If you do an ifconfig on the local server you will see that your interface has been replaced by LxcBridge

LxcBridge Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:0c:29:66:f8:4c

          inet adr:192.168.1.107  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Masque:255.255.255.0

          adr inet6: fe80::20c:29ff:fe66:f84c/64 Scope:Lien

          UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1

          RX packets:372 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0

          TX packets:125 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0

          collisions:0 lg file transmission:0

          RX bytes:43554 (42.5 KiB)  TX bytes:23808 (23.2 KiB)

Install/Create your first container (Virtual server).

Now you are able to create a container but before you need an Operating system to emulate.

Install templates

Go into the status tab

You have 2 icons that allow you to download templates (currently Fedora and Debian).

Templates are "already" pre-configured systems that are the system base of your container.

Click on the icon of the desired template.

Each template will be downloaded by Artica. It needs around 500Mb so be be careful about your disk space.

When templates are downloaded and installed, you will see a table that display all available templates.

Select the VPS servers icon and click on the green cross to add a new Virtual server

Select the template with the drop down list
Give a name of your VPS server in Computer name and the real hostname in hostname field.
Set an ip address and the root password in to access it trough ssh.
Check the enabled and autostart feature