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Step 2: Designing Initial VM

Project Scope:

Look into the various issues around providing prepackaged Windows VMs to students

Project Goals: Answer the following questions:

• Can we produce a VM that is joined to the domain? What are the issues related to this?
  NOT in a useful fashion.  Unique SIDs along with long installation times make this not viable for the VM living on student machine model running through VMware Workstation/Fusion.  A Virtual Desktop Infrastructure could deploy such functionality but has significant server requirements and involves much more maintenance than we can achieve at this time with available resources.
• Any advantages to Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7 in this model?
  Windows XP would be the best place to start
• Does our student MSCA licensing allow us any options to make Windows VMs available to students?
  Yes, under the MSCA we can have up to 4 Windows virtual OS installed on a student or staff machine.
  • What if they are in the domain? - see above question about domain
  • What if we charge a per-head fee?  - license is not effected by whether we charge or not
  • What if they are locked down somehow? - more important for individual application licensing since we are allowed to have Windows virtual OSes
• Does VMware allow virtual machine changes while the VM is shut down, that could be done via scripting or an MSI or installer wrapper? For example, could we change the MAC address?
  Some VM configuration, such as MAC address can be configured by modifying the VMware configuration files which are separate from the VDK (virtual disk).
  Apply Windows patches would require either replacing the VDK with a patched version or running a patch management within the launched VM.
• How big would a useful VM storage be? Could it fit on an 8GB thumb drive? 16GB?
  16 GB is the realistic minimum we should consider for an Windows XP VM with the types of applications we want to deploy  

Project Lead:

Jonathan Hunt  

Timeline:

2-3 weeks starting June 22, 2009

Deliverable:

Report with detailed answers to the questions for later use by Duncan Kincaid and Jim Cain.

Next Steps

Design an initial Windows VM that could be provided to students that can be reviewed by stakeholders before testing.  The initial design requirements include:

• Initial Software Stack
• Windows Installation Steps
• Windows Configuration
• Prepping VM for distribution 

Project Goals: Design the Initial VM

• Initial Software Stack with goal to try and meet GIR software needs
• Windows Installation Steps with detailed documentation along the way
• Windows Configuration (including WAUS, setting up Athena cluster printers, etc.)
• Prepping VM for distribution (sysprep, compression, etc.)

Project Manager

Jonathan Hunt  

Timeline:

4-6 weeks starting Sep 15, 2009 (Estimate completion date for this step is Oct 27, 2009)

Deliverable:

• Initial SW Stack - List of software to install on the VM including for which course(s) it is needed, approximate number of students, installation size and software version. For software that has been identified as needed for the GIRs that is not included, reason for excluding should be provided. Some known reasons already or license restriction and installation size with small usage does not justify increasing the VM size sufficiently.
• Windows Installation Steps - Step by step documentation on how to create the base Windows XP VM to be used for the distribution.
• Windows Configuration Steps - Step by step documentation on how to configure the VM including printer configurations, driver inclusion, account setup, automatic updates, etc.
• VM Preparation Steps - Step by step documentation on how to setup VM for distribution. This is expect to include steps for using sysprep (especially around encrypting the XP product key), and VMware to package the VM for optimal delivery to students. Enabling ACE features will be considered in Step 3 - Enhancing the VM.
• Sample VM - a produced VM ready for testing that includes some, but not all of the software in the software stack for basic VM testing features.
• 1st Experience Video - a video recording from VMware of what the students first boot experience is so that others can see what happens without having to experience it themselves.

Next Steps

After completing this stage of the project, the Software Stack and Windows Configuration will need to be shopped around with the stakeholders to ensure that we are achieving the goals and meeting the needs.Update and Next Steps - Decision?