Help needed to chose the right configuration

Help! (Home for newbies)
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Hi guys.

First of all, congratulations for the nice community you have here.

After reading many posts without being able to take a decision, I finally decided to ask for help in choosing the right configuration to build a system I need for testing.

Secondly, although I’m getting by a bit with the Linux console, I’m far from being a sysadmin and when things I read in tutorials go wrong…

So, I found Virtualmin when I got fed up with the problems I had with Plesk on the other VPS I had contracted before… a small VPS where I had about ten domains, mostly projects I am developing for myself. I’m really impressed with many of its features and although I don’t really need the PRO version, I think I will take a license to support the development team, since as a programmer I understand how hard the job can be sometimes…

The problem I want to solve, is that I have encountered several times problems with the difference between the working/testing and production environments and I even tried to build two systems as similar as possible, doing the installation on the same day, and using the same version of Linux/Virtualmin so that the same updates always arrive. However, there are still some differences in behavior… :frowning:

At the same time, the sites I am hosting on the VPS are in PHP and MySQL, and I have recently acquired some new skills and would like to start developing also in NodeJS, Mongo and React.

Therefore, my idea would be to have a development/testing system based on Docker containers so that I can replicate them identically in production, if one has problems, it will not mess up things to other sites and also be able to have a spare system in case the main server goes down…

My doubts are:

  1. Is there any way to use the same Virtualmin instance (where I have my domains and virtual servers for PHP) and create virtual servers pointing to Docker containers even if I the redirection might be done somehow manually?

  2. The only machine I have available now in my house, has installed the TrueNAS system (formerly FreeNAS) where I have my virtual test server with Virtualmin, but I think the virtualization of TrueNAS is based on Bhive and I would not even know where to start to install Cloudmin in case it could be done? Would I have to get a new machine where I could install XEN or KVM? I guess there must be some free version for such a small thing like mine.

  3. Once I had the test system running, could I replicate it on the VPS…if I’m not mistaken, I think my VPS is running on KVM.

  4. What other possibilities are there to have a robust, production system (especially in terms of security issues), that would not be too difficult to implement?

Thank you in advance for your support.
Kindly,
George.

SYSTEM INFORMATION
OS type and version TrueNAS CORE - Version: TrueNAS-12.0-U5.1
Virtualmin version NONE still…
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Welcome to the forums. Great you joined the community. Have you looked into Proxmox? If you have that as a base, you could create virtual instances, clone, use backups/restore - easy to manage containers if you mess around. Hetzner, OVH and SoYouStart do have reasonably priced servers.

If you want to stick with VPS. You could link up multiple Virtualmins so they update all the patches/updates and changes of configs simultaneously. Assuming same OS etc. This should be doable. Somebody else will have to provide more details as I am not an expert in this area.

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Hi Whoops and thank you very much for your answer.

I took a brief look at Proxmox the last year when I was deciding how to set up my NAS, since my ReadyNAS PRO was long time out of support for updates and with SMB version 1 instead of 3, it was no longer such a good idea to have it open to the internet. So, in house, using Proxmox may be a great solution to manage virtual machines since it will be behind a router and not accessible to the internet. However, I am not sure if it will be such a good idea to have it on a VPS and manage it through a public IP in terms of security and also, I don’t know if it may be a good idea to virtualize a hypervisor in terms of performance (if possible…) and at the moment, the amount of 50-75€/month to rent a dedicated server is out of my budget unfortunately… :frowning: However, it is on a waiting list when I will have more projects and I will be able to afford the expenses.

Linking Virtualmins on a couple VPS should do the trick to have a spare server online prepared but still facing the same problem of developing/testing environments since this is the main reason I am looking a solution to be able to manage my environments through Docker containers, to have them on identical environments on all places…

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I think containerised Virtualmin is something that the team may look into long term. It was mentioned in another post if I remember it right. Not going to happen any time soon so I guess your virtualmin will for now have to be outside the container, rest of dev stuff inside the container.

Save up some money :slight_smile: think proxmox on dedicated hardware and copy VPS as you see fit would work nicely. You could have production vps, test vps and backups.

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oh for the right config suggestion, please contact pete or virtualmin folks…

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@artware-solutions,

I’d be happy to discuss a gameplan with you. I’m a specialist when it comes to deploying Virtualmin and have a bunch of test servers along with production servers in play. The solution you need and/or want may be easier then you think.

Drop me a line if you’d like to discuss.

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As I’m understanding and refining the topic more, I think that what would possibly come closest to what I wanted to obtain, would be just the other way around: have two VPS (which will be cheaper than one dedicated server, and for my actual traffic is enough) each one with Virtualmin installed (for me is enough having only one Virtualmin instance per VPS), linking them to take care of handling everything and redirecting traffic to the applications/domains in Docker containers so that the different environments (development/testing/production) will be identical.
Thanks for sending me your suggestions :wink:

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Thank you for your offer. I will do that and if we find the final blend, with your permission we can post it in the thread so it will help others as well if they will be looking for something similar.

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Hi @tpnsolutions ,
Did you receive the DM I’ve sent you some days ago?

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