[K12OSN] teaching kids sys admin with VM's

[David H. Barr]

On Jan 17, 2008 12:36 PM, Les Mikesell <les at futuresource.com> wrote:
> 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.
> >
> > Problem: what are the sys req of such a box?
>
> The disk contention is probably going to be the bottleneck.  The more
> spindles the better - and the more RAM the better.

We successfully ran VMware server (free-as-in-lager) on k12ltsp
CentOS.  No troubles with a Pentium D processor, 4GB of desktop RAM,
and software raid5 SATA 3.0.  There were six individual instances of
virtualized Windows 98 (for training on a particular Windows + IE only
site) running on the "server" and displayed on the PXE booted scrap
PCs.

Remember that the Pentium D is about the lowest form of dual-core
processor, and our memory was clocked at 533 mhz.  I suppose what I'm
trying to say is that a dual-quad setup with 16 GB of RAM could quite
conceivably handle such a load.  With 16GB of RAM, you could probably
assign each student 256 or 384 MB of RAM for their VM with very little
difficulty (not 512, as VMware requires a little overhead per VM).

This advice is worth exactly what you paid for it, YMMV, and so forth :)

-dhbarr.