Pulse Connect Secure on ProxMox

Ever wanted to try out Pulse Connect Secure on Proxmox? Here’s a quick howto.

Pulse Connect Secure (PCS) trial can be downloaded for free here: https://www.pulsesecure.net/trynow/pulse-connect-secure/. It is limited to 2 simultanious user connections, but this should be fine for testing.

Download the image

The download is available as VMWare, KVM or Hyper-V image. Off course, we go for the KVM image.

Once downloaded, copy it to one of your Proxmox hosts using SCP/WinSCP. Unzip the package:

# unzip ps-pcs-kvm-psa-v-9.1r8.0-b7453-package.zip
# gunzip PSA-V-KVM-PCS-7453.1-VT-kvm.img.gz

Create a new virtual machine in Proxmox

Now create a new VM on the Proxmox GUI. Don’t bother the disk type, since you’ll delete it and import the downloaded IMG in a later step. Give it 2G RAM and 2 vCPU’s.

When the VM is created, go to Hardware and delete the hard disk.

Import the PCS image

Back on the cli, you can import the KVM image to the new VM:

# qm importdisk <vmid> PSA-V-KVM-PCS-7453.1-VT-kvm.img <storage>

Where <vmid> is the virtual machine ID (can be found on the GUI) and the <storage> is the storage type (for example “local” or “local-lvm”).

Now we need to go back to the GUI, and add the disk we just imported: select “VirtIO Block” as Bus/Device, and click Add.

Boot up the PCS

That should be it! Just start the VM, follow the first-time-run wizard to configure network settings and the admin account. When done, you can log on to https://<pcs-ip>/admin to complete the configuration

Upgrading the PCS

Since this is a trial, and no core license is installed, you cannot upgrade the PCS by uploading the upgrade .pkg to the GUI.

You can download the latest trial image from the link above, unzip it, import it as a second disk, and then swap them in the GUI. When booting up the PCS, it will be in a factory default state, so you’ll have to run through the wizard again, and restore the backup you took just before you started the upgrade 🙂

If something does not work after the upgrade, you can swap disks again to boot up the previous version.

Good luck!