Can vmware esxi do this? multiple & different OS at the same time?

M

multi-tasking_guy

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jun 16, 2017
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currently i have 2 servers at home, but instead of using 2 servers i just want to use 1 server, because having 2 servers is overkill, i have windows serverOS on one server and linux serverOS of the other

the servers are just for getting experience and learning



i can easily install both websites on 1 server, but that means i would either have to pick to use windowsOS or linuxOS

i want to use both at the same time,

so that means both websites will have the same IP


so, when someone types in www.t-shirt-shop.com or www.my-dog-website.com, the server will direct the domain to the correct virtual machine

this would save me from running 2 servers, and i can continue to run 2 different operating systems, which helps me learn different operating system,

i tried virtualbox but virtualBOX can't do what i want, heres what i want, i drew a picture to help person understand better as its a bit confusing


esxi.png
 
Yes what you need is a reverse proxy server. I have my home servers setup like that. My router directs all web traffic to the proxy server, proxy server pushes the web traffic to the correct server.

myaddress.com/nextcloud - Goes to my nextcloud server
myaddress.com/homeassistant - goes to my home automation server
etc....

I run caddy as a reverse proxy but I have used NGINX as well.

https://www.nginx.com/resources/admin-guide/reverse-proxy/
https://caddyserver.com/docs/proxy

Also I dont have much experience with virtualbox but im pretty sure you can do this in it. But I have done it in Esxi and Now Zenserver(What im using Now). I just spin up the the reverse proxy server on zen give it a static ip, then point the router at it.
 
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you said "server(s)"

i'm just looking to have 1 server, i already have many servers, but i want to use only 1 server in total


i think i made a mistake on my picture, here is the updated picture, as you can see those were not other servers, they were virtual machines inside 1 server

esxi.png
 
Yes i am referring to virtual servers. I run one "Host" a dell R710 that runs xenserver bare metal. Then I virtulize the rest of my "Servers".
 
Not anymore, Xenserver is a Virtualization platform like esxi or Hyper-V.

I have a Physical server that I run other virtual servers on. One of those virtual servers is a reverse proxy that directs all web traffic coming in from my router to all my other web facing virtual servers

ESXI is just software, you can do this on just about any Virtualization platform. It really has nothing to do with the bare metal virtualization.
 
oh really! so i could probably do that with virtualbox, i always thought it was the virtual software needed to be able to do that
so i could probably do it with any of them, virtualbox, esxi, proxmox

i just need to setup that caddy proxy server you speak off

so your setup looks like this,


esxi.png



i will have to try and see if i can setup that proxy server

thanks!
 
Yes thats how it works. Caddy is probably the easiest to setup but it does not have as much documentation or tutorials out there like NGINX does.
 
Sounds like a good use case for Docker and Traefik or HAproxy/nginx.

:D
 
Maybe I don't understand fully. But it seems all you need to do is give one VM one IP address and one another, which is simply a matter of assigning them in VirtualBox or whatever you choose to use. If you don't like like the idea of a virtual NIC then throw another physical one in there. Then forward requests to the appropriate server as you're already doing. Did I read this all wrong? Because it seems you're over complicating things.
 
Yes, VMware's free ESXi platform can do what you want. The only limit to the number of virtual machines on one server is the resources you have available.
 
Grimham said:
Maybe I don't understand fully. But it seems all you need to do is give one VM one IP address and one another, which is simply a matter of assigning them in VirtualBox or whatever you choose to use. If you don't like like the idea of a virtual NIC then throw another physical one in there. Then forward requests to the appropriate server as you're already doing. Did I read this all wrong? Because it seems you're over complicating things.
Click to expand...


I don't have 3 ip address, I only have 2


1 ip for my main desktop computer which i surf the internet and play games, and;
1 ip for my server with 2 virtual machines inside

if i had enough ips, i could easily let each vm have its own ip, but i dont want to purchase any more ips, i dont think my isp even lets me have more, and my plan is to have 7 vms in total in 1 server

so i dont have enough ips. so my only solution is to give the 2 virtual machines internal ips and my server has the main ip


here is my current setup
Screenshot_2017-12-27_15-45-27.png




as you can see the server, has the main ip, 82.xxx.xxx.xxx
and the 2 vm's have internal ips, 192.168.1.20 and 192.168.1.21

i put the vms on different ports

192.168.1.20:80 -my website1
192.168.1.21:81 -my website2


so when someone types mywebsite1.com in the browser, it supposed to go to the server and the server tells it to go to vm 1


thats what i was asking, im going to figure it out, by what people said here, to add a reserve proxy,

because currently when someone types mywebsite1 and mywebsite2 in the browser, it takes them to my servers ip and into the esxi login form
im new to esxi, so i think i have to add some sort of virtual router, i'll figure it out eventually
 
Virtual router? No.

Regular old Router? Yes.

Virtual Machines aren't any different than regular machines, if you abstract it a bit.

You have 2 physical machines now. You virtualize one of those, run it on a hypervisor on the other (that can be VMWare, it can be VirtualBox, it can be whatever you want - doesn't matter all that much). You still have 2 "Machines", just running on one CPU. The way you had them routed before from when they were 2 physical machines doesn't change. The VM can even have the identical IP address as the physical machine it replaces.
 
192.168.x.x are internal (LAN) IP addresses, you can have over 250.

Why does the traffic have to hit your server at all? Handle it in your router - forward :80 to one internal IP and :81 to another and so on...

I really must be missing something here, and if so, I apologize. I just don't want you to have to reinvent the wheel on something that (in my mind) should be straightforward. If someone needs to set me straight I'll gladly take it though.
 
because the domains needs to be attached to an IP, i can't attach a domain to a 192.168.1.20 address

both domains mywebsite1 & mywebsite 2 will be attached to ip 82.xxx.xxx.xxx
 
Just for the benefit of everyone here:

You currently have 2 physical servers, one Windows and one Linux. With the intention of eventually running 2 different domains. You don't actually have that working yet though.

So the networking aspect of it is one question. (if it's web servers, most web servers can easily handle multiple domains on a single external IP with no issue with Name Based Virtual Hosting, before you even hit something like a reverse proxy)
Then, virtualizing it is a second question. (Get the first question working, and the answer to virtulization is "Yes, it works")
 
I don't have 2 physical servers. I only have 1 physical server and inside that physical server are 2 virtual machines

I have before used 1 webserver to host multiple domains, and it worked fine,

but this time its different, It's 2 different webservers, each hosting 1 domain
 
well, so far, i am having pretty much the same problem i got a little further than orcale virtualbox, but esxi still is giving me problems


i got both virtual machines web servers up and running and domains working, but



for the first domain, everything is working fine,

but for the second domain, i have to put :8080 at the end of the domain



my settings,

Screenshot_2017-12-27_19-27-03.png



typing domain
surf2.png



i think that what Riouken was saying at the beginning of the thread, to make another virtual machine, a reverse proxy virtual machine, will solve my problem


on step closer!
 
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multi-tasking_guy said:
well, so far, i am having pretty much the same problem i got a little further than orcale virtualbox, but esxi still is giving me problems


i got both virtual machines web servers up and running and domains working, but



for the first domain, everything is working fine,

but for the second domain, i have to put :8080 at the end of the domain



my settings,

View attachment 47875



typing domain
View attachment 47878



i think that what Riouken was saying at the beginning of the thread, to make another virtual machine, a reverse proxy virtual machine, will solve my problem


on step closer!
Click to expand...


You can run them both in IIS with no issues on port 80, but you have to update the bindings so each site only listens for a specific host name. Delete the default website, and create 2 new IIS sites for each web site. So you'll have site 1 listening on port 80 for 'www.website1.com', and site 2 listening on port 80 for 'www.website2.com'. Any other host names will be ignored by IIS.

If you want to keep the second site on a linux box, you can setup IIS as a reverse proxy and forward requests for that site to the linux box. No sense adding a second server to do something an existing box is already capable of.


That will fix your current issue, but there are much bigger security concerns with how you have this setup.

1- You absolutely need to get a firewall in front of your server. The firewall should be the only server with a public VM. Set up port forwarding so any requests on port 80 get redirected to the PRIVATE ip of the IIS server. You do not want your server completely open with a public IP, especially if you don't have it isolated in it's own DMZ

2- You should have the binding on port 80, but all requests on that port should get redirected to port 443 with an SSL cert. It's a simple change to the web.config of each of the sites, and secures the connection between clients and your server from snooping ISPs/anyone else. ESPECIALLY if you are going to be passing secure info like logins/payment etc. You will have to add another rule on your firewall to forward inbound requests on port 443 to your IIS server as well. Then you'll need to import the certs on the IIS server and add a second binding for each site on 443.
 
thank you! i managed to get 1 server working with the proxy server

now i am having problems getting both of them to work at the same time, i get a HTTP Error 404 not found on the second server, on the first server the website is working



here is what i did,
1. install centos7
--install epel and nginx on centos7
--open http/https port 80 on firewall centos7
--edit the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf


for both windows servers
2. install windows server
--both machines have different ip example: 192.168.1.104, 192.168.1.109
--binded them both to their own domain website1.com and website2.com
--both listening on port 80


open ports
3. port forward 80 on router on the linux vm, 192.168.1.102


put domains pointing to ip address
4. make both domains with the ip address, in my case it was 84.xxx.xxx.xxx





that's pretty much it, i worked for 1 server, i can see the website, but when i tried another server, i am getting a HTTP Error 404. The requested resource is not found.


i will continue and try to figure it out

heres what my nginx.conf looks like

Code: 
# For more information on configuration, see:
#   * Official English Documentation: http://nginx.org/en/docs/
#   * Official Russian Documentation: http://nginx.org/ru/docs/

user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

# Load dynamic modules. See /usr/share/nginx/README.dynamic.
include /usr/share/nginx/modules/*.conf;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
   server {
    listen 80;
    server_name WIN-svr1;
    location    /  {
        proxy_set_header     x-real-IP                $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header     x-forwarded-for          $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header     host                     $host;
        proxy_pass           http://192.168.1.104;
    }
 
   }
 
 
     server {
    listen 80;
    server_name WIN-svr2;
    location    /  {
        proxy_set_header     x-real-IP                $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header     x-forwarded-for          $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header     host                     $host;
        proxy_pass           http://192.168.1.109;
    }
 
   }
 

}






for some reason i cant see the second server's website, not sure if it nginx problem or wnidows,

anyways i am getting closer!
 
i got it working!!!!!!

the windows vm's were giving me problems, the 404 error is a windows problem and i got no idea how to fix it, i thought it was an nginx problem,

i setup 2 linux vms instead for my websites and boom! it worked,

not sure why the windows servers wont work with nginx, must be something i have to set up, anyways for now, i will use linux vm's and i will eventually figure out the windows server problem

but its working!!!!!!! 3vms, centos(nginx), centos(website1),centos(website2)


awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


my nginx file looks like this:

Code: 
# For more information on configuration, see:
#   * Official English Documentation: http://nginx.org/en/docs/
#   * Official Russian Documentation: http://nginx.org/ru/docs/

user nginx;
worker_processes auto;
error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

# Load dynamic modules. See /usr/share/nginx/README.dynamic.
include /usr/share/nginx/modules/*.conf;

events {
    worker_connections 1024;
}

http {
   server {
    listen 80;
    server_name website1.com;
    location    /  {
        proxy_set_header     x-real-IP                $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header     x-forwarded-for          $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header     host                     $host;
        proxy_pass           http://192.168.1.110;
    }
  
   }


i also added this in my /etc/hosts file

Code: 
127.0.0.1    localhost localhost.localdomain localhost4 localhost4.localdomain4
::1          localhost localhost.localdomain localhost6 localhost6.localdomain6
192.168.1.108 localhost.localdomain website1.com website2.com

gonna shop around for a server or desktop that has lots of ram
thanks everyone for the help
solved!
 
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