Brian Padgett's picture

Please forgive me if this has been addressed before. I could not find it anywhere in the forum.

I have been using the Wordpress Appliance for a while now to host our wordpress site and it works great. I would now like to add another wordpress site and would rather not not use wordpress multi-site. I would like to use another appliance.  I don't want to have to use a seperate public IP for each appliance. What is the best prctice for this situation? If I'm off track, what is the best way to host multiple wordpress sites with the appliance?

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Hayden's picture

I could be wrong but in you Apache webserver setting you need to Create virtual host

Jeremy Davis's picture

If you want to run 2 WordPress sites from the one appliance you can do that using virtual hosts (in Apache - the webserver component of TKL WordPress). This would use the same WordPress installation but the sites would be separate. I can't help with the details, but you should find plenty of info, searching here or even via google. (Just remember that TKL v11.x is based on Ubuntu 10.04/Lucid).

If you want to run a completely separate 2nd TKL WP appliance (ie a separate VM or even on bare metal) but with the same public IP you can do that too. You will need to set up one as a reverse proxy (or set up a 3rd machine as a reverse proxy). Sorry but again I can't give you details on how to configure Apache to do that, but you should be able to find a tutorial on how to do that via Google.

Feel free to post back if you are having troubles getting it working. If you do get it sorted, be great if you could post back with that info too as no doubt someone else may want to do this too.

Tom Copeland's picture

Hey guys,

What if we're interested in running multiple WordPress sites using MU, but want to point individual domain names to each site?

In other words, here's the structure:

site1.example.com - one wordpress install, entirely individual site - sampledomain.com pointing here

site.2example.com - second wordpress install, entirely individual site - anotherdomain.com pointing here

The issue I'm having in understanding all of this is that I don't know how to point a domain to a subdomain of another domain! I only know how to point to a seperate directory, i.e. example.com/site1 for www.site1.com.

I'm a web developer with very little know-how of running my own servers. The idea here is that I can launch multiple, serperate client sites using MU (all of which would then be assigned subdomains of the main domain name), and then point each client's domain name to their WordPress app.

To keep server costs down, I may install WordPress MU to a launched TKL micro instance, say 5-10 WordPress site to each micro instance. Or just launch them all on a bigger instance. I figure I could only run maybe 3-5 small sites on a micro instance (am I estimating that corretly?) I have like 5 sites right now that pay me for hosting that I could move over.

Or is there an easier way to do all of this?

Thanks guys, you rock!

T

Brian Padgett's picture

Jeremy, Would it be possible to have something developed for my businesses needs? I don't have much time to spend on puting what I need together. However I would be willing to pay to have something developed. I am currently looking for something to host multiple Wordpress sites and Zimbra Email. I would like to run each site and each email domain from a seperate VirtualBox machine. I would also like to manage the DNS or reverse proxy from main VM host machine.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Don't get me wrong. I love VirtualBox. But it's more a desktop solution IMO. I know Rik has created a headless VirtualBox server and perhaps that would suit your needs but I definately wouldn't be running the setup you're talking about on a desktop. For starters, Zimbra is a resource hog so if you want it to be responsive then you'll need to allocate a lot of resources to it. Also the nature of a server is that you will want it on all the time (I'd imagine) so having it running on a desktop is potentially a liability (someone might acidentally turn it off). I'd definately be looking at something headless so you can devote all your machine resources to the VMs and ideally not even run a GUI on it. Then it could sit in the corner merrily chugging away. Personally I love ProxmoxVE but I have heard others sing the praises of OpenStack (I'm yet to play with it).

And back to Zimbra, unless you need all of it's functionality then there are probably lighter webmail hosts that may be a better option? Also the TKL appliance is starting to show it's age IMO and hasn't been updated for some time. Unfortunately TKL haven't got any other email host appliances yet but IIRC there was a patch made for RoundCube (or something similar) that may be useful? I guess it depends on your needs.

As for the actual construction of your desired network components, I'm possibly up to the task, but I couldn't give you a clear timeframe - I work fulltime and have a son to keep tabs on! Besides all the oher stuff I do around here! Also as it's not something I've done for others (outside of my work) before so I'm a little hesitant

I'd try contacting the devs (Alon and/or Liraz) and see what they think as they are possibly appliances that would be worth creating anyway (and if you are happy for the work to be shared with the community they'll give a good rate I reckon). There is also another guy here in the community that I'd fully vouch for: Adrian Moya. All 3 of them can be contacted via firstname@turnkeylinux.org. If they're not responsive, not keen or some other reason can't/won't do it then drop me a line personally (same email addy but 'jedmeister') and I'll see what I can do.

Eric (tssgery)'s picture

I've played with OpenStack a little and while I think it's [going to be] great, it's overkill for what is needed here. I am all for a headless solution, but think that the free XenServer or VMware ESXi or a headless KVM server would be sufficient. I've not used ProxmoxVE but it may very well suite the needs as well.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Thanks for your input. As I said I haven't played with OpenStack but I've heard good things. Sounds like it's not ideal for this instance though.

One of the fantastic features IMO is that supports OVZ as well as KVM. OVZ is fantastic for most Linux servers and because it works similarly to a chroot jail (but even better) it runs like bare metal with minimal resource usage. Also getting OVZ guests to access hardware is really easy (and again performance is pretty much like native). KVM is handy if you want to run other OSs like Win or BSD. That's mainly what I use it for, although I occasionally run Linux under KVM too (it's handy of you want to access vmdk or other virtual HDD images). As OVZ uses the host kernel, if you want to use a differnt kernel for some reason, then you need to use KVM then too.

The current stable PVE (v1.9) is built on Debian Lenny and has a simple but effective WebUI. v2.0 is in early beta and is based on Squeeze and sounds as if it will have a flashier WebUI with many additional functions (such as being able to allow indivdual users access to only one or 2 machines). v1.9 also has some powerful commandline tools built-in too (which I assume will also be available in v2).

The only catch is that it requires 64 bit CPUs with virtual extension (AMD-v/VT-x) but most relatively modern hardware supports that. It is FOSS (ie free in both senses of the word) but also has paid support if required. I don't think there is a comparable free product currently available on the market (most of the free ones are proprietry crippleware in my very limited experience).

Brian Padgett's picture

My new setup will be on an Intel Quad Core server with 16gb of ram and at least 2tb of drive space. I'm not familiar with these headless servers. I have been running Virtualbox for a year cause I found it was more stable and didn't freeze up like VMware. I'm open to try anything but I would like something turnkey. I need everything Zimbra has to offer cause I'm converting customers from Exchange server.

Does any of the headless servers support reverse proxy out of the box?

Eric (tssgery)'s picture

While you really want to save as much resources as possible for the running of your virtual machines, I should also say that if you are comfortable with a specific virtualization toolset... use it. They all have their pros and cons, but the biggest pro is that you're familiar with it :)

Personally, I have never seen VMware ESX/ESXi lock up on supported hardware and have experienced fewer issues with it that anything else. Thats said, I'll still re-iterate to use whatever you're comfortable with and fits your needs. The whole idea of virtualization is to lower the total cost of ownership, if you spend those savings managing the system or in frustration... there is no savings.

Brian Padgett's picture

I'm looking at ProxmoxVE and it looks promising. I still need something for reverse proxy.

Jeremy Davis's picture

As I've said [many, many times :) ] I'm a big fan of PVE but I think tssgery has a good point above in that if you have to have a huge learning curve then it's not very efficient. But I think PVE is easy enough to use OOTB and the forums have a huge amount of info and the devs are very active on them (considering the free support is so good I imagine that the paid support would be incredible). For what you require you should be able to work it easily (just ignore the more advanced features).

As for your reverse proxy thing, considering that you are planning on using virtualisation, I'd keep the reverse proxy standalone. Apache(/webserver) config isn't my strong suit but it should be pretty easy to setup. I have heard that Apache config is pretty straightforward so I might have a quick look at that. Also NginX is apparently really good for reverse proxying but I found the config overwhelming. Squid is another option and may be quite easy to set up. I have heard that there is an app called Pound which is designed for this stuff but I haven't looked at it.

If I get time tonight I'll have a quick look and get back to you.

Brian Padgett's picture

I am leaning toward pound but it doesn't have cache. I'm not sure I would need cache anyway since I have cache enabled in wordpress.

Jeremy Davis's picture

Some info here. I'm not sure whether you'd really need a caching proxy, I guess you could check it out and see.

Apparently Squid isn't too bad either and it could be used as a caching proxy. Also it has a Webmin module which may be helpful.

The beauty of setting this all up virtually is that it'd be fairly easy to set it up both ways and compare them.

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