Running Virtual Machines/Containers in Armbian Ubuntu - advice please

[arangaran]

Guys i have an orange pi zero 3 4GB RAM version, with armbian ubuntu running currently with a static ip, and i have installed a vpn service on it and it works wonderfully, but it barely uses all the cores and the ram,  so i was wondering about using some kind of virtual machine service like qemu-kvm, lxd or even docker to run virtual machines inside.

I know many would say go for docker, although what i need is something closer to a VM than to a container, because i need these VMs to have their very own static ips connected to the network and isolated from the others yet able to send and receive traffic between them and the network, i have read that this kind of behavior might be problematic with docker and it is easier to do with proper virtual machines, but, i dont know how mature are things under ARM, is qemu-kvm working perfectly as it does under x86? i thought about trying LXD but i dont know how well this would go being a canonical thing and because you dont install the OS but download an image from a repository, one that might not have an ARM build for it.

 

So for what i want to do, having container/VMs with static IPs with all the capabilities of networking, which one would suggest to me? if anyone got more info about whatever you suggest it will be much appreciated.

[bedna]

On 5/4/2024 at 9:32 PM, arangaran said:

I know many would say go for docker

 

Yes, use docker... xD

 

On 5/4/2024 at 9:32 PM, arangaran said:

because i need these VMs to have their very own static ips connected to the network and isolated from the others yet able to send and receive traffic between them and the network

 

I don't think there is any problem achieving that, I think it just takes a few entries in a docker-compose.yml where you set up the networking.

Not multiple ip:s though, not sure how you would achieve that on anything, but you use different ports and define what can communicate with what, bridging and so on.

With docker you have to open up, it is completely containerized by default, even between other docker containers on the same machine.

 

Futher reading here: https://docs.docker.com/network/

And for docker compose: https://docs.docker.com/compose/networking/

 

I highly recommend you familiarize yourself with docker compose, it makes everything sooo much easier.

Edited May 8 by bedna

[arangaran]

I have successfully run proxmox 8.1.7 with lxc containers and VMs on it in this lil thing so its doable and works well, and i can run docker inside a VM with ubuntu or debian.