[ale] Mass Machine Virtualization w/ Remote GUI Access

[Steven A. DuChene]

Yes, but Jeff specifically said one of his problems is that the local desktops
are in many cases not heavy enough to run vmware or MSVPC sessions.

-----Original Message-----
>From: Christopher Fowler <cfowler at outpostsentinel.com>
>Sent: Feb 21, 2006 2:13 PM
>To: Atlanta Linux Enthusiasts <ale at ale.org>
>Subject: Re: [ale] Mass Machine Virtualization w/ Remote GUI Access
>
>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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>
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