[K12OSN] LTSP and virtualization

[David H. Barr]

On 10/4/06, Rob Owens <hick518 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> One thought I had was to set up an LTSP server that
> uses VMware or Qemu to run Windows 2000 on Linux.  (I
> have enough Windows licenses to cover all the
> potential users).  Would this work?  Would my server
> load running 10 instances of virtualized Win2k be 10x
> the load of running just one?  Or would I benefit from
> the sharing of memory, processes, etc?  Would I need
> to load 10 separate Windows images on the server, or
> just one?

I'm currently running VMware (much faster and easier than Qemu/kQemu)
on a Ubuntu machine.  I can tell you right now that you will NOT
benefit from the sharing of processes; you can benefit SOME from the
sharing of memory (although it's a speed tradeoff); and you would, in
fact, need to load 10 separate Windows images on the server.

This is probably not a cost-effective solution for you, because these
virtualization / emulation solutions pretend to be an ENTIRE PC, right
down to the hardware level.

To adequately run 10 copies of Win2k on a server, let's say at 256MB
of memory per virtual machine, you'd need about 3 GB of RAM.  Add in
the further requirements for the LTSP side (including the thin
clients) plus all the private networking traffic, and a hard drive
image for each virtual machine and you're talking about a sizeable
server investment.

I have no experience with the Windows Terminal Server end, but I
understand it's pretty easy to accomplish; since an LTSP server to
support only 10 users is fairly cheap to build, this may actually be
the most cost-effective option.