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Sell VPS on Proxmox VE

Updated

PNLCS sells KVM virtual machines and LXC containers on Proxmox VE. When an order is paid, the server is built from a template, sized, given an address, the customer's SSH keys if they gave any, and started — and the customer then runs it from the billing portal: power, live graphs, root password, reinstall (with new SSH keys), snapshots and backups. You see the same panel on the admin's service page.

A customer's virtual server

How it fits together

flowchart LR
    A[Customer orders<br/>OS, memory, cores, disk] --> B[Invoice paid]
    B --> C[PNLCS clones the template<br/>into the pool]
    C --> D[cloud-init: password,<br/>address, disk size]
    D --> E[Server starts]
    E --> F[Customer panel:<br/>power, graphs, reinstall,<br/>snapshots, backups]

Every server PNLCS makes carries a tag and a note naming its service. PNLCS stops, reinstalls or deletes a machine only when that mark is there — a VM id in the billing records is never enough on its own — so the machines you run on the same host for other reasons are never touched.

Setting it up, step by step

Step What you do Where Time
1 Prepare Proxmox: a pool, a user, an API token and its permissions, the cloud-init snippet Proxmox host shell ~10 min, once
2 Connect the server and press Test PNLCS → Setup → Servers 2 min
3 Install operating systems from the image library PNLCS → Setup → Servers → Images 1 min per system
4 Create the product: resources, network, allowances, checkout options PNLCS → Setup → Products/Services 5 min
5 Order it yourself once and check the customer's panel Client area 2 min

After that: running VPS services (adding one by hand or linking one that already runs with Link to an existing account, suspending, upgrading, traffic) and troubleshooting and questions.

What you need

  • Proxmox VE 8 or 9 (7.x works but is not tested; the check warns below 7). A single node or a cluster.
  • A storage for disks (local-lvm, ZFS, Ceph…) and a network bridge the servers go on (usually vmbr0).
  • A way to give addresses: DHCP on the bridge, or a range of public IPv4 addresses PNLCS hands out one per server, plus any additional addresses the product sells.
  • The PNLCS scheduler running every minute (cron runner): it finishes long jobs such as reinstalls and image downloads.

No nameservers are needed for Proxmox.