[ale] Mass Machine Virtualization w/ Remote GUI Access

[Christopher Fowler]

On Tue, 2006-02-21 at 14:03 -0500, Jeff Hubbs wrote:
> I've got a situation where a number of users on a development shop LAN 
> are in a bad way because they're trying to run a number of different 
> Win2K3 Server virtual machines - done up in Microsoft Virtual PC - on 
> their desktops.  This has come to result in people trying to pull and 
> push around 4-6GB of MSVPC files on the LAN, and, of course, anyone who 
> wants to actually run an instance on MSVPC has to have scads of RAM and 
> this is often incompatible with various people's desktops and laptops 
> who may be running "only" 512MB, tops. 

vmplayer rocks!

> 
> My way of addressing this would be to use VMware instead of MSVPC, 
> running it on an "uberserver" capable of  holding and running numerous 
> virtual machines at once, such that various people can connect to the 
> virtual machines at the display level from their own WinXP desktops and 
> laptops. 

ESX or GSX?  

> 
> It's that last part that I have a question about.  Given that it would 
> be nice if more than one person could actually connect remotely to any 
> one of these virtual machines (i.e., fighting over mouse/keyboard if so 
> inclined), how to best cover the remote access?
> 
Terminal Services

> Ways I'm aware of include Xorg+Cygwin, a commercial X Server for 
> Windows, VNC, or MS Terminal Services. [NOTE:  I assume that all but the 
> last would take place over OpenSSH].
> 

Terminal Services

> What do you think?
> 

I would use vmware to create a standard machine.  Maybe with a 10G disk
image.  I would then zip it up and copy to share.  Do not install
anything on it.

You can then have them copy off share to desktop and use vmplayer and
install anything they want in that image.  

> Jeff
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