Deploying Sycope in Proxmox Virtual Environment

We provide you a step-by-step guide to deploying the Sycope Virtual Appliance on the Proxmox Virtual Environment, offering an interim solution while official support is being developed.

Sycope software is provided as the Virtual Appliance, meaning that the user is not required to provide any operating system or a database instance. All the monitoring and security features as well as the proprietary database are embedded within the appliance itself.

Sycope Team is working to improve, adding new features and supporting the latest standards. The appliance is currently available in OVA template, which is officially supported with VMware Virtualization Platform.

In the near future, Sycope plans to bring official support for open source KVM Virtualization Platforms such as Proxmox. By performing few custom steps, there is a way for users to deploy our Sycope OVA template on such platform. Keep reading for a step-by-step guide.

Ready to get started? Download the latest Sycope OVA file from our Support Portal and let’s dive in!

Next, OVA file will need to be transferred to the Proxmox VE local storage. For our example, I have used /var/lib/vz and created new directory called Sycope using WinSCP client, which allows for file transfer over SSH protocol.

Once the transfer is finished, we are required to use Shell console of our Proxmox VE server. Built-in Shell or SSH client (such as PuTTy) can be used. In the console, we need to navigate to our directory and unpack the OVA file using below commands.

root@pve2:~# cd /var/lib/vz/Sycope/

root@pve2:/var/lib/vz/Sycope# ls

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2.ova

root@pve2:/var/lib/vz/Sycope# tar -xvf Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2.ova

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2.ovf

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2.mf

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk1.vmdk

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk2.vmdk

Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-file1.nvram

root@pve2:/var/lib/vz/Sycope#

Now, let’s create new virtual machine. We will attach Sycope virtual hard disks a bit later.

In our example, we have used Sycope-3-0 name.

Guest OS Type will be Linux and Version will be “6.x – 2.6 Kernel”. There is no need to use any external media.

For System Tab, please use below default configuration:

Graphic card: Default

Machine: Default (i440fx)

BIOS: Default (SeaBIOS)

SCSI Controller: Default (LSI 53C895A)

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As for disks, please remove the one created by default. We will attach existing storage once the virtual machine will be created.

Regarding CPU and Memory configuration, please refer to Sycope Requirements and adjust both depending on the size of your environment and number of flows per second. For best performance experience, we are recommending choosing “CPU Type: Host”.

https://documentation.sycope.com/Requirements/  

In the Network Tab please choose “Model: VMware vmxnet3” option. Other options should be adjusted depending on the Proxmox virtual network configuration.

Once the virtual machine is created, we will be required to create a second Network Device with the same “Model: VMware vmxnet3” configuration. This Device can be in the “Disconnect: Yes” state. Thanks to this approach, we will replicate the same network configuration as in the OVA template, used by VMware.

Additionally, if Proxmox automatically added cdrom media, we can safely remove it.

Now, we need to go back the Proxmox Shell and import disks, which we unpacked from our OVA file.

Below command examples require a bit of modification.  

182 is the Virtual Machine ID, which should be adjusted to the ID in your environment. VMDK files for disk1 and disk2 might have different names, depending on the downloaded Sycope version. Also, “data2tb” is the name of the Proxmox storage with our machine.

root@pve2:/var/lib/vz/Sycope# qm importdisk 182 Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk1.vmdk data2tb --format raw

importing disk 'Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk1.vmdk' to VM 182 ...

---snipped---

transferred 128.0 GiB of 128.0 GiB (100.00%)  

Successfully imported disk as 'unused0:data2tb:vm-182-disk-0'

root@pve2:/var/lib/vz/Sycope# qm importdisk 182 Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk2.vmdk data2tb --format raw

importing disk 'Sycope_3.0.0.0-vm7.0u2-disk2.vmdk' to VM 182 ...

---snipped---

transferred 180.0 GiB of 180.0 GiB (100.00%)

Successfully imported disk as 'unused1:data2tb:vm-182-disk-1'

Once the internal transfer is completed, please go to the Hardware tab in your new Virtual Machine, select Unused Disk 0 and in Disk Action click on Add. The same steps need to be performed for Disk 1.

As we have added both Disks manually, we need to switch to Options tab, edit “Boot Order” and choose scsi0 of Disk 0. This will ensure a proper boot sequence for our new Sycope deployment.

We are at the final stage. Now we can Start the Virtual Machine and log in to the local Console.

In Network Interfaces tab you will find the current IP address for the main interface. By default, dynamic IP address is used, which can be easily changed to manual IP by Edit action.

We are finished with fully working Sycope installation in the Proxmox Virtual Environment.

As we do not need additional custom steps, we can continue using the official documentation, starting from “IP address, DNS Server and Gateway configuration” chapter:

https://documentation.sycope.com/Installation-Guide/Deployment#ip-address-dns-server-and-gateway-configuration  

Have a great experience with Sycope! With features like Quick Setup and many user-friendly tools, getting started is a breeze. And remember, if you ever have questions or need assistance, our Support Team is here to help you every step of the way.

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