More than one host on turnkey wordpress

There are a number of ways to share an IP address. Some options require manual implementation (free DIY) and others will do it automatically (requires shared hosting type software...sometimes free, sometimes fee-based).

There are two potential scenarios:

1) Software requiring a web interface can co-exist compatibly in a single computer / VM

2) Software requiring a web interface cannot reasonably co-exist in a single computer / VM

The term compatibility extends to software compatibility (i.e. can their respective software operate on the same VM without side-effects) AND performance capability (i.e. are their resource requirements complimentary...best if they have peak resource needs at different times of the day).

In your case, since Smarty and Wordpress are both php-based they have a good chance of co-habiting the same VM though there is a small risk that an upgrade to the php version or debian packages to address an update in one (Wordpress or Smarty) could break the other.

I'm going to leave you with 3 options to consider:

Option 1a) Setup two Apache virtual servers manually (at command line or via Webmin interface)

See http://www.debian-administration.org/article/412/Hosting_multiple_websit...

Option 1b) Using a Turnkey LAMP appliance install Virtualmin

See http://www.webmin.com/virtualmin.html (NOTE: would probably need to de-install webmin first)

Option 1c) Use Turnkey Docker with two TKLX LAMP stack containers

See /blog/announcing-docker-builds

I will be interested to see what Liraz, Alon and Jeremy (and others) have to suggest.

Liraz...you might want to create a new post on this topic and give it your usually deep-dive Lirazation of the topic...would be of benefit to all your members...just following the classic rule of meetings...always volunteer someone who isn't in the room to do something :-)

Firstly I am wondering why the desire/need for a single IP? Is there some reason why a single IP is required? I could think of reasons why you'd want a single server if it was being hosted (primarily cost) but not really any that I would consider good enough for LAN servers (although possibly some really old or limited hardware...). I guess under VMware you also have the additional resources required by individual server(s) but I would imagine that for a TKL server only being accessed via LAN (minimal concurrent users; therefore limited resource needs) that would be negligible.

That brings me to some more questions...: When you say VMware do you mean a desktop VMware product (i.e. something where multiple servers may make a noticeable difference to the performance of a workstation)? Or is it a VMware hypervisor product (ESX/ESXi/vSphere) running on it's own dedicated hardware? I guess if you had a desktop product maximising resources available for the host system would be desirable...

As for Tim's answers, personally it would depend on the ultimate goal. My answer would depend on what the exercise was trying to achieve; but I would probably select 1c (because personally I like redundancy and separation of servers). If there were some compelling reasons to have one single server, then I would go 1a.

But if given the freedom, I'd go an entirely different direction (well actually not that different, but a bit...). So to essentially not actually answer the question and to go off on my own tangent, assuming a desktop VMware system or a freeware VMware hypervisor system (and/or the availability of hardware that can run 64 bit OS) I would install Proxmox!

As many TKL users would know, I'm a big fan of Proxmox. So I would create each server in it's own OpenVZ (OVZ) container. Many would know that similar to LXC (i.e. Tim's 1c), OVZ is a container virtualisation system which creates minimal resource overhead, although each server would have it's own IP. To make contacting the systems easy I would also have a local DNS server on the LAN (another OVZ container; TKL Core with bind9 installed) configured with the IPs and corresponding names of the 2 (or more) web servers (e.g. wordpress and smarty). Then the relevant server could be contacted within the LAN via http://wordpress.lan or http://smarty.lan etc...