Recently at CloudVPS we launched our new high available OpenStack Cloud. On our Xen Linux platform we offer the DirectAdmin controlpanel, but this image was missing on our Legacy OpenStack offering.
The past few months our people have worked hard on developing and vigorously testing the DirectAdmin image for OpenStack. As of today this image is available for all our OpenStack customers and can be rolled out via Horizon.
In this article we discus DirectAdmin on OpenStack, since there are a few differences between DirectAdmin on OpenStack as opposed to Xen. The following must be done:
Deploying DirectAdmin via Horizon
Via our Horizon dashboard you can boot an instance as you are used to. To use DirectAdmin, select this image as the source to boot from.
You must provide an SSH key at creation time, you need this later on to retreive the password.
You must choose a direct-attached IP address from the ‘net-public’ network. Due to licensing, DirectAdmin will not work with a floating IP or an internal network.
Make sure you edit the security group to allow port ‘tcp/2222’, the admin interface for DirectAdmin. Only allow this port from your own IP addresses, which you will use to manage DirectAdmin. This way you make it harder for third parties to brute-force DirectAdmin.
For more information on SSH keys or Horizon, see our manual: https://www.cloudvps.com/openstack/openstack-getting-started
Requesting the license
After the instance is booted you must request a license. This is required for DirectAdmin to function. If you navigate to the IP of the instance in your webbrowser you will find instructions and a link to request a license (via email). You will receive the license code from us which you can use to activate DirectAdmin.
You can also manually email ‘sales@cloudvps.com’ with the subject ‘DirectAdmin OpenStack license’, in the email please provide the IP and UUID of the instance to license.
This license is a seperate product, bound to the IP of the instance. The license is not cancelled automatically if the instance is deleted and is invoiced per month (not per hour as other OpenStack resources). You must manually cancel this license per mail.
Get the admin password via Horizon
After creating the instance and requesting the license you must retreive the admin password via Horizon. This is the password for the ‘admin’ user, which is used to login to DirectAdmin.
Via Horizon navigate to ‘Compute -> Instances’, select the instance. Via the menu in the top-right choose ‘Retreive Password’.
In the next window you must select the SSH key used to roll out the instance via the ‘Browse’ button. You must choose your private key file. This is a local process in your browser, we never get to see the private key.
If your private key has a password, you must convert it to a key without password. It is not possible to retreive a password with a password-protected key.
After choosing the private key, click the button ‘Decrypt Password’. The password appears in the text box and can be used to login to DirectAdmin.
License installation
After you have received the license from us you must login as root via SSH. You will be asked for the license:
The DirectAdmin license check failed. This server needs a license to function.
Please navigate to http://1.2.3.4 for instructions on requesting a license.
Your IP is: 1.2.3.4
Your UUID is: 81ab9628-0c1a-4024-808b-7f70f73cc16c
Please enter your license ID:Enter the license code. Afterwards you can navigate to http://server-ip:2222 with username ‘admin’ and the password you retreived earlier.
If you enter nothing and press RETURN, you will be dropped in a regular shell. As long as there is no license on the server the script will be executed at every login. This way you can also clone the instance and license it afterwards.