Virtlix License Manager — Server Requirements & Installation

01

OS & Hardware Requirements

Operating System

64-bit Linux, fresh minimal install, with root / sudo access
Enterprise Linux family: AlmaLinux / Rocky / RHEL / CentOS Stream 9–10
Debian family: Debian 11–13, Ubuntu 20.04 / 22.04 / 24.04 LTS
PHP 8.3+, MariaDB, nginx, qemu-kvm & libvirt are installed automatically

AlmaLinux 9/10Rocky 9/10Debian 12/13Ubuntu 22/24

Hardware / Virtualization

Hardware virtualization required — Intel VT-x or AMD-V enabled in BIOS
Bare-metal / dedicated server, or a VM with nested virtualization
Minimum 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM — 8 GB+ recommended for real workloads
Verify: egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo must be > 0

02

Partition Requirements & Scheme

Recommended Partition Scheme

Create these partitions when you install the OS on the dedicated server (single-disk example):

Mount point	Size	Filesystem	Purpose
`/boot/efi`	512 MB	FAT32 (vfat)	EFI system partition — UEFI servers only
`/boot`	1 GB	ext4	Kernel & initramfs
`swap`	2–8 GB	swap	Swap (≈ RAM, capped at 8 GB)
`/`	40 GB	xfs or ext4	OS, Virtlix, PHP, nginx, MariaDB
`/var`	Remaining disk	xfs	VM disks, OS templates, backups & logs — put your largest, fastest storage here

ℹ️Virtlix writes guest disks to /var/www/virtlix/storage/vms and OS templates to /var/lib/virtlix/templates — both live under /var, so one large /var partition holds all heavy VM data. Prefer simplicity? Skip the separate /var and give / the whole disk instead.

Sizing & Notes

Minimum: 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM, ~60 GB disk — but VM storage is what you'll actually fill, so size /var generously
Use xfs for /var — it handles large sparse qcow2 images better than ext4
BIOS / legacy (non-UEFI) servers: drop /boot/efi and add a small bios_grub partition instead
NVMe / SSD RAID under /var is ideal for guest disk I/O

03

Supported Storage Types

Storage Backend

Local disk, qcow2 image files (default backend)
Remote Filesystem (NFS) storage pools — mounted automatically and kept mounted across reboots
VM disks are copy-on-write overlays on a shared cached OS base — new VMs & reinstalls are near-instant
Thin-provisioned: guests only consume the space they actually write
SSD / NVMe strongly recommended for guest I/O

Filesystems & Layout

OS template cache: /var/lib/virtlix/templates
Per-VM overlay disks provisioned as sparse .qcow2
Supported: xfs, ext4 local filesystems, or an NFS export mounted as a pool
Modeled for future support: Ceph RBD, StorPool, Lightbits NVMe/TCP

04

Installation

One-line install

Run as root on the prepared server. The installer sets up qemu-kvm/libvirt, PHP, MariaDB & nginx, opens HTTP/HTTPS, downloads the panel, runs migrations and activates your license.

install.sh

curl -fsSL https://virtlix.com/install.sh | bash -s -- key=YOUR-LICENSE-KEY network=bridge bridge_name=br0

📄Full installer output is logged to /var/log/virtlix-install.log. Your license key locks to this server's public IP on first activation.

05

Installation Parameters

Parameter	Required	Default	Description
`key=`	REQUIRED	—	Your Virtlix license key
`network=`	optional	`nat`	Guest networking mode at install time: `nat` or `bridge`
`bridge_name=`	optional	`vmbr0`	Bridge interface, used when `network=bridge` (e.g. `br0`)
`app_dir=`	optional	`/var/www/virtlix`	Install directory for the panel

ℹ️These flags only set the install's default network. Every IP you add afterward is checked against your host's real networking and wired up automatically - already bridged, a shared subnet (MacVTap), or a provider that routes additional IPs to your server's one fixed MAC (Vultr, Hetzner, OVH) - so most deployments never need to touch these flags at all.

06

Troubleshoot

KVM not available / “no acceleration”

Enable Intel VT-x / AMD-V in BIOS. Confirm egrep -c '(vmx|svm)' /proc/cpuinfo > 0 and that /dev/kvm exists.

License activation failed

The key is likely bound to another server's IP. Use Reset binding on the license in this panel, and ensure the server can reach virtlix.com over HTTPS.

Install failed midway

Read the last lines of /var/log/virtlix-install.log — the installer prints the failing step there.

Panel shows HTTP 500

Check storage/logs/laravel.log, and that php-fpm and libvirtd are running. On RHEL family, check SELinux denials in /var/log/audit/audit.log.

VMs won't start / no networking

systemctl status libvirtd must be active. For bridge mode, make sure the bridge you named actually exists on the host.

Slow first VM create

The OS template downloads once, then caches. Pre-warm images from OS Templates → Download to node so later builds are instant.