How To Install The Proxmox Mail Security Gateway 6.2 On Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1 To Protect Your Email Server
The Proxmox mail gateway is a fully featured open source mail security product that comes with almost all the functionality that you would expect in a mail security product. You can download, install, configure and also use it for free of charge without having to worry about licensing fees. Proxmox also provides premium, standard, basic and community support subscriptions which are an additional service to support IT professionals when setting up and using the Proxmox Mail Gateway. The mail gateway comes with features such as SPAM / VIRUS filtering & scanning for incoming and outgoing mail, TRACKING & LOGS, HA CLUSTER, RULE SYSTEM and more. Continue reading this tutorial to learn how to download and install the Proxmox Mail Security Gateway version 6.2 on Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1. Click on the button below to watch the video tutorial.
Requirements.
In order to complete this tutorial successfully the following items are required. Please ensure to have these items available before taking implimentation action on this tutorial:
1) A desktop , laptop PC or Mac with atleast 4GB RAM and 250GB hard disk space.
2) Oracle VM VirtualBox 6.1
3) Atleast 1 network interface card
4)The Proxmox Mail Gateway 6.2 ISO file
Overview.
1) Go to the Proxmox Mail Gateway download page and download the ISO file for version 6.2
2) Open Virtualbox and create a new virtual machine. Set the virtual machine as a linux debian 64bit VM and allocate atleast 50gb to the virtual hard disk and 2048 MB RAM
3) Power on the virtual machine, attach the proxmox ISO file and install the Proxmox OS
4) Shutdown the virtual machine, detach the ISO file, power the virtual machine and open the proxmox web based user interface.
Proxmox Mail Gateway Topology.
The image on the right show a typical network topology of where you can place the Proxmox Mail Gateway.Placing the Proxmox Mail Gateway between your network firewall and your internal mail server will mean that all SMTP traffic is forwarded to the Mail Gateway first then emails are checked, filtered, removed or rejected and then forwareded to or from your internal e-mail server.
Proxmox Mail Gateway System Requirements.
In order to install and use the Proxmox Mail Gatewat successfully the following are the minimum system requirements for deployment on a physical server or on a virtual platfom:
1) 64bit intel or amd processor
2) 2 GB of memory (RAM)
3) Atleast 8GB of disk space
4) 1024 x768 screen resolution.
5) 1 x Ethernet network interface card.
Step 1: Download The Proxmox ISO file And Create A New VirtualBox Virtual Machine.
1) Click HERE to go to the official Proxmox Mail Gateway download page to download a copy of the proxmox ISO file. Please note that the download file is about 900MB in size.
2) Once the download is complete open VirtualBox 6.1 and click on the NEW button or press the “CNTRL +N” keyboard shortcut. This will open a virtual machine creation wizard.
3) Type in a descriptive name for the virtual machine and select a location to save virtual machine files on the MACHINE FOLDER option. Set the virtual machine type as LINUX, choose DEBIAN (64 BIT) on the VERSION dropdown and click on CONTINUE
4) As mentioned above on system requirements set the MEMORY SIZE slider to 2048 and click on CONTINUE.
5) On the HARD DISK page of the virtual machine creation wizard, select the CREATE A VIRTUAL HARD DISK NOW option and click on the CREATE button. Choose the virtual hard disk file type that works best for you and click on CONTINUE. If you wish to use the virtual machine on other virtualization software products such as VMware ESXi or WORKSTATION select the VMDK option.
On the STORAGE AND PHYSICAL DISK page, select the DYNAMICALLY allocated option so that the virtual hard disk only uses up space on the actuall physical disk as it fills up. Click on the CONTINUE button and click on CREATE.
6) Before powering the Proxmox virtual machine you can edit the network and vidoe card configuration. In this case the virtual machine will be allocated more video memory and its network adapter will be set to bridge mode.
To do this configuration, select the newly created Proxmox virtual machine and click on SETTINGS. Click on the DISPLAY tab and set the VIDEO MEMORY slider to 128MB. Click on the NETWOK tab and on ADAPTER 1 set the ATTACHED TO: option to BRIDGED ADAPTER and select your ethernet adapter on the NAME dropdown.
Click OK to save and apply changes.
7) Select the virtual machine and click on the START button to power it on.A file selection window will be displayed prompting you to select a virtual optical disk file. Click on the small file icon and click on the ADD button.
Browse to the location where you saved the Proxmox ISO file and click on OPEN, click on CHOOSE then click on START.
8) Click on the INSTALL PROXMOX option and when prompted to accept the end user license agreement click on the I AGREE button.
9)Confirm the Proxmox installation hard disk and click on NEXT, set your current location, timezone and keyboard layout and click on NEXT. Set an administration pasword and email address and click on
10) Proceed by adding your environment specific details on the MANAGEMENT NETWORK CONFIGURATION section of the Proxmox installer. On this section you have to type in your fully qualified domain name, the static IP address, subnet mask, default gateway and DNS server to be used by the PROXMOX MAIL GATEWAY.
Once you have typed in your network values, click on the NEXT button. A preinstallation summary will be displayed and show you all the selections that you have made. If you wish to make any changes click on the PREVIOUS button but if the are no changes to be made click on the INSTALL button to proceed.
11) Once the installation is complete reboot the server then open a web browser and type in the ip address of the server with the port number 8006 e.g
https://proxmox-ip-address:8006
This will open a login page where you can type in “root” as the username and the password that you specified on step 9. Once you are logged in you can now start to make furthur configuration that are specific to your network.
