Installing a guest OS using Containers
First you need to log into your Proxmox console using your web browser. The URL generally looks like
https://nsXXXXXX.ovh.net (where X is your server's number). The default username is "root" and the password whichever was assigned to you by OVH.
From the Home screen, which provides a quick overview of the system status, on your left-hand side you will find the
Virtual Machines menu option. You select this to view, create and remove Containers/VMs.
Configuration Portion
From Virtual Machines screen, select the
Create tab, found near the top. By default, the configuration specifies
Container (OpenVZ) as the
Type, which is what you will use for this.
Following you will find a drop-down field for
Template. You can select from a list of OS distributions, which are Proxmox/OpenVZ compatible - for example
centos-5.1-i386-minimal. Adding more OS distributions will be discussed later.
The
Hostname field specifies a unique name which helps you recognize the container. This hostname is also used for IP functions.
A container has both the
Memory and
Swap field (specified in Megabytes), and a little care should be used with this. The container, due to virtualization of diskspace, will NOT have a swap space mounted. Instead, it will only have virtual RAM - the total of what you will specify in the
Memory and
Swap fields.
So if you were to specify 512 for Memory and 512 for Swap, the OS within the container would see 1024 MB of RAM. There are several issues that arise from this.
First, because there's no swap space mount, this is the only memory a container will have available (advanced users will overcome this, surely). Therefore, it it required more memory, other things would have to be purged from RAM or alternatively - and unfortunately - crash the container.
Second is the difference between Memory and Swap. What you specify in Memory is a guaranteed amount of RAM memory on the host that can be allocated. Anything that the OS within container requests over this amount, will be allocated on the host's swap space mount. This could potentially reduce performance if the container would continuously request more than its guaranteed allocated Memory (RAM) space.
Lastly, the Memory (RAM) space is not immediately allocated on the host. It is therefore possible to assign more Memory (RAM) than what is physically present on the host. However, should the containers all use up their allocated Memory, and it exceeds physical capacity on the host, containers will begin to fail. Careful planning should be made with the Memory and Swap two fields!
The
Password fields assign the specified password to the root account for the container.
The
VMID is a unique number assigned to the container (Proxmox automatically assigns a number, however you can override this). This number is primarily used for additional tools, such as Proxmox's backup utilities and shell commands.
A
Cluster Node can be specified if you have more than one Proxmox hosts linked together. In this case, the main Proxmox host can create a container on another host.
The
Start at Boot option ensures the container is immediately started along with the host itself. For example, upon reboot of the host, the container will start as well.
The
Disk Space is specified in Gigabytes, and is what the container will see as the available disk space (single mount only). Like with the
Memory and
Swap fields, some care should be taken with this field, as the amount of disk space is not fully allocated upon creation. It simply permits the container to use "up to" the specified amount. If you were to allocate more disk space than what's physically available on the host - either per container or all containers combined - you run the risk of running out of physical space before you run out of virtual space.
Network Portion
Proxmox provides two
Network Types.
Virtual Network or
Bridged Network. The Virtual Network option (venet), is the default and most common option, creating a point-to-point connection between the host and this particular container. You do not need to do anything but assign an IP address in this instance.
The other option, Bridged Network (vethX or vmbrX), is bridged between the physcal Ethernet devices and the container, with its own MAC address. You are required to modify the gatway, etc., once the container has been created and is running (from within the container).
The
DNS domain is more commonly known as the "Search domain". Any DNS lookups for domains that are not a FQDN will use this to create a FQDN.
The first and second DNS fields depend on your host setup. Proxmox assigns the same values the host is using (OVH's DNS server), however you may be required to change this if you use your own / internal DNS server.
Once you have entered the desired values in these fields, click the
Create button at the bottom of these fields and a new container will be created for you.
Starting and accessing your container
The first time, you will need to start your container manually. From the Virtual Machines screen, select the
List tab. You can use the quick menu, by clicking the arrow at the left of your container's VMID and selecting
Start. Alternatively, you can click on the container's name and click the
Start button found on the status page.
To access your container, you can use SSH or use the provided
Console function in Proxmox (accessed the same way as described above).
Originally Posted by kro
