hyper-v any opensource software that can do this?

tony33

tony33

Hey, what would be needed if you're trying to sell vps services?

webhosts have a website interface that when you place an order you select what OS and how many cpu's you need and ram and hard drive space.

After they make payment their virtual private server is created in seconds. Are their open source software and api's I could use to get such functionality?

Also how would an admin be able to have root access to just make sure and see if a client isn't mis-using the services? doing anything illegal using the machine to conduct illegal activity?
 
In PHP you can run commands on the host system (like ls,touch..for example)
take the form data of the web page and translate into a script and run it
you can use sudo for example to run the commands
For sure is not secure (I dont develop anything for a long time)
but,is the only that come to my mind..following the KISS filosofy

the last question..mmm..you rigth,
you gave a webpage to somebody but how you now that person is not doing someting ilegal?
but without broke the law
I believe that you have to do terms and make the user read it and accept it before creating the web site
and there you can inspect the traffic from while to while inside the user virtual machine(in this I dont know too much)
or more easy, visit the web page from outside like a regular user and act from there,if you see something ilegal..take actions
 
tony33 said:
Also how would an admin be able to have root access to just make sure and see if a client isn't mis-using the services? doing anything illegal using the machine to conduct illegal activity?
Click to expand...
You need to verify to legality of doing so in your jurisdiction.

You may want to have a look on ClonOS or CBSD alone.
 
Hi, I bought a ton of servers and want to set them up to be a VPS. How can I get my website to have an interface to setting up a virtual machine?

Is there any php libraries? I am willing to code the interface. I was told I would need a type 1 virtual machine which is an OS.
I am thinking to do this but still don't know how I would get my website to interface with it? Like the customer would need to select what os to install and how much memory, ram, storage they need.
I would like suggestions on what I can do?
 
tony33 said:
I would like suggestions on what I can do?
Click to expand...
Invest in vSphere or XenServer. Both have APIs you can call from your (web)application that do all the heavy lifting.

[Mod: This is just a continuation of the first question, threads merged]
 
vigole said:
I believe OP has something similar to VirtKick in mind. But I don't think that's OSS.
Click to expand...
Yes, it's exactly like that. I already wrote my own billing cycle process but will need to make some modifications. The problem for me is creating and managing the vps or virtual machine. It's not just making it and creating it but my main worries is legal liability. I mean I still want to have some control over that if I need access to the virtual machine I can do so without any issues even if the hard drive or storage is encrypted.
 
rigoletto@ said:
You need to verify to legality of doing so in your jurisdiction.

You may want to have a look on ClonOS or CBSD alone.
Click to expand...
Yes, otherwise I wouldn't really care much. The laws in my country and local laws require me to record all traffic I have and keep logs on my system. I also have to monitor my own equipment and report any illegal activity to the authorities. The authorities can contact me and request info or access to servers by court orders. If I don't do this I get 2 big fines from 2 different govermental entities. So, it's not a question about legality. I know I can legally do this if I want to but it's more that I am legally required. If someone uses my servers to do anything illegal like hack or steal or resell bank details etc. If I don't have logs and proper documentation I can face fines and if some how they can convince a court that I am helping criminals hide then I can face prison time and criminal charges. So, it's not a matter if it's legal I may or may not do it. It's more of I am required and if I don't do this I can face fines and even criminal charges.

I will check out what others suggested. I might end up with vSphere. I looked up some scripts that are free that uses the API and is already coded to make it a lot easier to plug into my own website.
 
One factor you may have to also keep in mind, is going to be any applicable licenses for the OS/software. For linux, and *BSD OS it may be easier to deal wtih, but Windows and RHEL get more difficult in how you handle those. That also includes some pre-installed software too. That part sadly isn't getting any better, with licenses starting to consider each VM (and in some cases core/cpu counts) are considered independent of the physical machines. So in instance if you are using a Windows server host system hosting some Windows Server VM's; in that you need a license for the host servers on top of each of the VM's.
 
Maybe this is somewhat related: you may want to glimpse onto the technical & "business flow" infrastructure of posteo.de (write a kind e-mail?). The legal rules here in the EU will be similar in some regards to the US. They managed to decouple the client's identity from their business logic. I'd strongly guess that they needed advice from some very talented lawyers, but eventually they received a "five stars" from the german federal commissioner for data/information privacy.
 
I used to work for a company that was doing just that: reselling VPS on their own hardware.

I quit that job in 2008 so this is really dated. I remember that year I became aware of AWS. The CEO wanted us to do the same thing: be able to provision a VPS at the click of a button. If I remember correctly, provisioning was done manually by the support staff. We were trying to develop our own software to do this, but I quit during development. Those were quite grandiose plans for the resources we had. I don't know if it ever worked out.
We had 2 types of offering: Xen and OpenVZ. With that tech, bare metal users had root access to the VPS.
We weren't doing anything wrt monitoring users activity. As far as I know, there were no legal requirements, but that was then and there.
Our most popular offering was low cost (~$6/month), "edgy" Linux VPS. SEO to the main site was a big deal.
Hardware was routinely over-provisioned, performance and subsequent support requests were a continuous headache.
We had many options related to distro, CPU, RAM etc..

You'd have quite a bit of work in setting up this type of infrastructure by yourself, specially If you don't find an off the shelf product and create your own.

Keep in mind that you have many variables you can play with. Maybe you want many small customers that pay just a little, with high churn and no support. In that case you need automation. Maybe you want few bigger customers that pay a lot with white glove support, in that case you may not need as much. And, you can change over time.

If you develop your own solution, I would look at a design where the website drops commands into a queue, and a queue processor interprets those commands, checks payment/auth/security etc., and builds the VPS.
 
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