[K12OSN] teaching kids sys admin with VM's

[Les Mikesell]

Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> Wondering if I could run k12ltsp 5EL for a full class of 30 kids. But
> in addition to the ltsp environment, each kid also have a vmware VM so
> I can teach them to install/configure a Linux OS.
> 
> My students like Linux but many of them are not comfortable installing
> it at home. One of the main barriers is that they have no experience
> installing/configuring an OS. They never get a chance to be root in my
> class. I could also teach them how to setup their own apache web
> server.
> 
> Problem: what are the sys req of such a box?
> 
> Could this handle it:
> dual  -  quad core Xeons/Opterons (8 cores total)
> 16GB ram (approx 512MB per person)
> 4 15k rpm scsi in a raid

The disk contention is probably going to be the bottleneck.  The more 
spindles the better - and the more RAM the better.  If you need to cram 
this all into one box you might want the ESX version, in which case the 
vmware people might help with hardware selection.

> Any pitfalls people see?
> For one I am wary of kids installing games in their VM's. I can't
> restrict what they do in their own VM's.
> I am also worried their VM's may break my ltsp setup. Could that happen?
> Also that they would start services on eth1 (outside network). Maybe I
> can restrict this, not sure. Wondering if this idea would be better on
> it's own box on the internal network. If so then how would they access
> it, vnc, nx?

Network wise, vmware can look like a separate box bridged to the NIC(s) 
on the host (separate IP's on the same subnet) or the host can NAT so it 
  only uses the host IP externally.  One thing to watch security-wise is 
that if you have NFS-exported home directories, anyone who can become 
root on a client machine can impersonate anyone else and access their 
files over NFS.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    les at futuresource.com