[K12OSN] teaching kids sys admin with VM's

[Rob Owens]

On Fri, Jan 18, 2008 at 10:09:42AM -0800, Robert Arkiletian wrote:
> On 1/18/08, Rob Owens <rob.owens at biochemfluidics.com> wrote:
> > How about this.  You create a virtual machine for each student, and you
> > own them.  Create a bridged interface on the host machine for each
> > virtual machine, and let the students ssh into them.
> 
> If I was only going to allow ssh access I would probably use OpenVZ.
> 
I didn't mean necessarily to only allow ssh.  I just meant that to administer their virtual machine, they would need to connect remotely since they cannot run the virtual machine directly.

> 
> > I'd also like to recommend you try VirtualBox.  I've been using it on
> > Debian with great success.  Its interface looks like VMware, but it was
> > a quicker installation than VMware (last time I tried VMware, anyway).
> > There is an open source version that is not crippled in any serious way.
> >   The debian package is virtualbox-ose.
> 
> I have tried Virtualbox. I really like it (seems lighter than VMware)
> but I have heard that it does not scale as well when using many
> virtual machines as vmware. Plus, I'm not sure if it has the remote
> console that vmware has.
> 
I've run 4 or 5 virtual machines at once with VirtualBox.  It seemed to do ok, but the machines were not really doing anything (just running idle).  I've booted 2 or 3 at once (Debian Etch text mode) and my dual core AMD 5600 w/ 4 GB ram handled that ok.  I've never tried running any more than 5 simultaneous machines, though.

What's VMware's remote console, and what do you use it for?  Maybe I could tell you if VirtualBox has something similar.  (or forget about it and just use VMware)

-Rob