Virtual Machine Questions

[glunday]

2 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

 

We don't want worker computers, instead we want a single server that acts as the worker computer.  Using only one "worker computer" would be a ton more energy efficient and cost effective in the long run for a school that runs the computers every day.  Thanks for the insight though

you are going to spend A LOT more in upfront costs and energy using one computer than using something like vmware where you have worker computers. you have to build a pretty beefy computer to handle all that and than it's not scaleable. when you have to expand your kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. and the 1 computer will always be running even when very little is being done on it. whereas on a system with worker machines the control computer can turn on and off the other workers as needed and only use the minimum amount of worker machines you need saving power. also if you need to expand just add another worker machine for 200-300$ and you should be able to handle another 10-20 silmantanies users depending on your settings, maybe more depending on the exact machine.

[leadeater]

Virtualizing desktops (VDI) on a small scale is just a bad idea. The economics don't work out even over a very long time. There are also very significant technical barriers that prevent it from working well enough at a user acceptance level, you can overcome these but to do so costs very significant sums of money.

 

Many very highly paid solution architects have posed the same question and come to conclusion that it almost never works out better. Never do VDI to save money as that is not the correct reason to do it. There are absolutely positive reason to do VDI, security, manageability, resource scaling etc but cost saving never makes the list unless your talking thousands of concurrent logged on and active users.

[Cubed_]

39 minutes ago, DrM said:

afaik, thats highly impractical. the vms could share a single gpu, but then you end up with only a single user and 25 windows. to be able to seperate the users, you would need something like kvm on the host and each guest with their own gpu. so to have 25 users, you need 26 gpus. in kvm, i know you can physically map each usb port to a certain vm, so the hubs could work. the main problem is what happens when something breaks. if theres an issue, it ends up a nightmare to troubleshoot, not to mention we are talking about a school it. not to doubt his/her knowledge, but im not so sure they can maintain such a system

Why would it be a nightmare to troubleshoot?  You just teach the it for what to look for.  I'm not sure we even need a gpu, if the usb hubs would work.

38 minutes ago, glunday said:

true, most cant handle what they have now.

 

If people teach them, of course they could.

36 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

You can have multiple users per gpu if you have a nvida tesla/grid or a firepro.

 

You can also use the cpu emulated gpu and it will be fast enough for most uses,

 

You can use remote desktop over ethernet and now you have one cable coming out of the server and no pass through.

I don't want remote desktop, but if we used tesla or whatever that could help with performance.

36 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

 

Trust me, it doesn't work very well.  I've worked with a few virtualization platforms, with Linux and Windows clients, and YouTube playback on the clients is not pretty.  It takes a lot of CPU to convert live video to IP Ethernet frames, and back.  There's a reason why nobody does it this proposed way in real life. 

 

Also, teachers are teachers.  They're not IT gurus.  If one client crashes, you tell the student to go share with another, or you have a spare sitting around.  If your 'super-duper' server crashes, its basically game-over until some IT guy comes and repairs it. 

I'm not looking for youtube playback.  On top of that, I don't want the clients to connect via ethernet, because it doesn't have enough bandwidth for me. Also, as you said it's not easy on the cpu.  The idea was to perfect the system so that it almost never crashes, and then on top of that have back up solutions or just figure out a way to make it so if it does crash to just restart the main computer and everything would work again.  Also to have an it person on staff or nearby to always fix issues when / if they arrise 

33 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Have you used vmware vgpu or xen vgpu?

 

This is done very often in businesses.

Are you asking me? Yeah, I've heard that it's been done before, and thought it'd be a good idea to bring over.

32 minutes ago, glunday said:

1) Youtube is blocked at every school i've ever been to

2) Some schools use this, they also have to have someone on staff that can fix and maintain it so its not economical without a VERY large amount of computers on it.

3) My work is working with some schools to have an offsite version of this maintained by us that they can remote into for their classes.

Yeah, pretty sure Youtube is blocked at ours, we have at least 300 computers in our school alone, then we have a second high school, three middle schools and a crap ton of elementary schools.  My high school is 2,000 kids, then add teachers.  Each classroom has a computer, and there are at least 300 classrooms.  Plus we have a library, multiple computer labs etc.

30 minutes ago, ARikozuM said:

Most schools even [have] an I/T club that would LOVE to "help out".

Exactly, I think even the classes would be interested in finding out how the computer worked etc.

28 minutes ago, glunday said:

part of what the schools around here want to do is for us to teach some things about VMware to the students not a full blown class but kinda like an extra cerr activity.

Yeah, I think this could also be another great part of implementing this system!

18 minutes ago, Mark77 said:

No its not.  Those systems are relatively obscure, and very uncommon.  Sure, their vendors would like them to be a lot more common, but don't get lulled into their marketing speak.  Client PCs are not going away anytime soon in the enterprise, especially with how miniaturized and inexpensive they're getting.   Those packages are primarily aimed use-cases that use GPU's for background computation, not interactive real-time use. 

 

A classroom full of Intel NUCs (or similar "small" PC's) is standard, cheap, off-the-shelf, can be fully remotely administered and managed with the various tools.  If one breaks, its trivial to replace.  Switched Gig-E probably will do a whole classroom instead of exotic 10gig-E solutions.  No student can meaningfully interfere with the experience of another.   I just don't see what exactly would be the advantage of trying to re-instate the "mainframe" concept, in a classroom no less. 

 

If anything, based on the schools I've been to in the past few years, the trend is towards BYOD as much as possible (with the schools lending the 'poor' kids laptops/chromebooks).  So basically everything has to work over wireless as most portable devices aren't even coming with wired Ethernet anymore.  High bit rate remote desktops are incompatible with such.

There shouldn't be any 10gig-E solutions, since the vms would be connected via usb or something.  No student would be able to interfere with another students experience, and the advantage to this method is one: energy saved.  While nucs would be more power efficient than our current computers, they are still expensive (esp when you have to buy more than 300 for just one school).  Then on top of that you have to remove all the old pcs, then put these in, then format them, then connect them, then troubleshoot if an issue happens etc.  Not to mention they would soon have to be replaced just to repeat the cycle.  My school uses a domain to connect, and using your own laptop would be even easier with this setup.  Our school already uses laptops and using this set up wouldn't disallow that.  These remote desktops wouldn't be accessed over the lan..

[glunday]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Virtualizing desktops (VDI) on a small scale is just a bad idea. The economics don't work out even over a very long time. There are also very significant technical barriers that prevent it from works well enough at a user acceptance level, you can overcome these but to do so costs very significant sums of money.

 

Many very highly paid solution architects have posed the same question and come to conclusion that it almost never works out better. Never do VDI to save money as that is not the correct reason to do it. There are absolutely positive reason to do VDI, security, manageability, resource scaling etc but cost saving never makes the list unless your talking thousands of concurrent logged on and active users.

i wouldn't say thousands, you can setup the system to be cost effective with 50-100 users.

[Cubed_]

8 minutes ago, glunday said:

you are going to spend A LOT more in upfront costs and energy using one computer than using something like vmware where you have worker computers. you have to build a pretty beefy computer to handle all that and than it's not scaleable. when you have to expand your kinda stuck between a rock and a hard place. and the 1 computer will always be running even when very little is being done on it. whereas on a system with worker machines the control computer can turn on and off the other workers as needed and only use the minimum amount of worker machines you need saving power. also if you need to expand just add another worker machine for 200-300$ and you should be able to handle another 10-20 silmantanies users depending on your settings, maybe more depending on the exact machine.

Wait.  Can you explain the concept you're describing? I think I may be misinterpreting it...

3 minutes ago, leadeater said:

Virtualizing desktops (VDI) on a small scale is just a bad idea. The economics don't work out even over a very long time. There are also very significant technical barriers that prevent it from working well enough at a user acceptance level, you can overcome these but to do so costs very significant sums of money.

 

Many very highly paid solution architects have posed the same question and come to conclusion that it almost never works out better. Never do VDI to save money as that is not the correct reason to do it. There are absolutely positive reason to do VDI, security, manageability, resource scaling etc but cost saving never makes the list unless your talking thousands of concurrent logged on and active users.

What do you consider to be small scale?  We have 300-400+ computers in the one school alone, and then multiple other schools with similar numbers.  That adds up to over 1000 computers.  Not only is this saving energy, but it's more easily upgradable and manageable...

[Cubed_]

1 minute ago, glunday said:

i wouldn't say thousands, you can setup the system to be cost effective with 50-100 users.

Exactly, when you have 400+ computers in one of the highschools alone, how is that not cost effective?

[leadeater]

1 minute ago, glunday said:

i wouldn't say thousands, you can setup the system to be cost effective with 50-100 users.

Thin clients cost much more than you'd expect, very similar to an actual PC with none of the draw backs. Reusing exiting computers as thin clients while can be done shouldn't be put in the cost calculation, they will have to be replaced at some point.

 

If you go with the really good VDI solutions like VMware Horizon you need proper Zero Clients, you can't reuse. These have special chips in them.

[Cubed_]

Let's say for a minute that it was time to upgrade.

 

In the current setup you'd need to buy around 400 new computers, let's say for 250 each.  That right there is: 100,000.. Of course there are discounts and stuff, but with the vm setup you could upgrade by just swapping out some parts.  On top of that when you upgrade the computers you need to pay staff to switch them all out and configure them...

[Cubed_]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

Thin clients cost much more than you'd expect, very similar to an actual PC with none of the draw backs. Reusing exiting computers as thin clients while can be done shouldn't be put in the cost calculation, they will have to be replaced at some point.

 

If you go with the really good VDI solutions like VMware Horizon you need proper Zero Clients, you can't reuse. These have special chips in them.

The plan is to not use thin clients, but instead zero clients where we could just re use the monitors we already have...

[leadeater]

@Cubed_ @glunday

 

There's more to it than just hardware. The software that runs these VDI solutions that actually makes them usable from both an administrators standpoint and for the users cost money, they are licensed at a per concurrent user session and it's very expensive. There is also the upfront buy cost of the software.

 

Virtualizing a server is extremely easy and everyone does it. Virtualizing a desktop of graphics and audio is almost never done, people have done it and there a really good case studies of school districts doing it in the US but to pull it off well is very complex and requires years of planning and product trials

[leadeater]

3 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

The plan is to not use thin clients, but instead zero clients where we could just re use the monitors we already have...

The cost of zero clients can be a lot depending on what type you need, if you use VMware Horizon they cost no less than a thin client and only mildly less than a PC.

[Cubed_]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

@Cubed_ @glunday

 

There's more to it than just hardware. The software that runs these VDI solutions that actually makes them usable from both an administrators standpoint and for the users cost money, they are licensed at a per concurrent user session and it's very expensive. There is also the upfront buy cost of the software.

 

Virtualizing a server is extremely easy and everyone does it. Virtualizing a desktop of graphics and audio is almost never done, people have done it and there a really good case studies of school districts doing it in the US but to pull it off well is very complex and requires years of planning and product trials

This was never expected as a project meant to be implemented next week.  If I can proove to the school it can be done we can take the time necessary to plan it out and figure out the details.  Also I'm sure the software can be expensive but it can be easily worked into the cost.

 

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

The cost of zero clients can be a lot depending on what type you need, if you use VMware Horizon they cost no less than a thin client and only mildly less than a PC.

We only need a dock, I've found some for $80 or less.  But again 80 x 400...  Still though, I think the savings in the long run make up for the upfront price.

[leadeater]

13 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

There shouldn't be any 10gig-E solutions, since the vms would be connected via usb or something.

That's not how it works, you can't connect to a remote VM via USB. If that's what you want look at Microsoft Multipoint Server, this I think is actually what you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_MultiPoint_Server

[Cubed_]

2 minutes ago, leadeater said:

That's not how it works, you can't connect to a remote VM via USB. If that's what you want look at Microsoft Multipoint Server, this I think is actually what you want.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_MultiPoint_Server

I think it is.  This is what I've been talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration

Did I mix up terminology? If so could you correct me?

[Electronics Wizardy]

29 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

Running the server and zero cleints would save a ton of energy compared to running the server and thin clients.

Not really, look at the dell wyse stuff. If you using standard desktops, id just pxe boot them into a minimal linux distro that just have the conection.

 

30 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

 http://ark.intel.com/products/91752/Intel-Xeon-Processor-E5-2650L-v4-35M-Cache-1_70-GHz is just a cheap of example of a processor that could be used in a dual socket configuration.  Two of those would give 28 cores, meaning almost enough, to match your specifications (excluding dual cores per computer).  Not to mention, 25 vms per server was just an idea it could always be lowered

Id run 2650's or 2660's and not use the L's. You paying more for less performance, Power Normally won't make a big difference in such a small install.

 

Also id give them all 4 cores. VM's can share cores.

32 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

since everything would be on the file server that the school already uses.

You gonna need a fairly beefy san to run then off of with 10gbe/fiberchannel. This will be SLOW of a normal file server.

 

33 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

except these servers wouldn't be in a server room,

Why not. You can fast connections to the san, and its easy to run cat 6/fiber

 

 

[leadeater]

7 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

We only need a dock, I've found some for $80 or less.  But again 80 x 400...  Still though, I think the savings in the long run make up for the upfront price.

A certified VMware Horizon Zero Client with the teradici chip in it costs a lot more than $80. You can't just use any Zero Client, it depends on the software you are going to use to run the system: VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop etc.

http://www.teradici.com/products-and-solutions/pcoip-products/zero-clients

 

A very efficient way to do what you want is just using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and RemotApp to publish applications hosted on servers to desktops or thin clients, or over the internet to BYOD/home. RemotApps look like the are installed and running locally on the computer but they are not.

[Cubed_]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

A certified VMware Horizon Zero Client with the teradici chip in it costs a lot more than $80. You can't just use any Zero Client, it depends on the software you are going to use to run the system: VMware Horizon, Citrix XenDesktop etc.

http://www.teradici.com/products-and-solutions/pcoip-products/zero-clients

 

A very efficient way to do what you want is just to using Microsoft Remote Desktop Services and RemotApp to publish applications host on servers to desktops or thin clients, or over the internet to BYOD/home. RemotApps look like the are installed and running locally on the computer but they are not.

Sorry, I'm only 15 and still trying to learn the stuff I don't know.. Could you elaborate a little bit more?

[Cubed_]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Not really, look at the dell wyse stuff. If you using standard desktops, id just pxe boot them into a minimal linux distro that just have the conection.

 

Id run 2650's or 2660's and not use the L's. You paying more for less performance, Power Normally won't make a big difference in such a small install.

 

Also id give them all 4 cores. VM's can share cores.

You gonna need a fairly beefy san to run then off of with 10gbe/fiberchannel. This will be SLOW of a normal file server.

 

Why not. You can fast connections to the san, and its easy to run cat 6/fiber

 

 

Could you explain some of those points a bit more?  How vms can share cores, different processors, why I'd need a beefy san etc.. Right now all the computers conect to the school domain via ethernet in windows 7.. Can't I just make vms that connect to the domain? 

[leadeater]

11 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

I think it is.  This is what I've been talking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiseat_configuration

Did I mix up terminology? If so could you correct me?

The problem is there is more than one way to do very similar things and figuring out what one is best for your situation is the key.

 

The 3 main types order from distance from the hosting server plus fully virtualized are:

• Microsoft Multipoint Server, host computer in same room with clients directly connected
• Remote Desktop Services, server in server room presenting either Applications or Full Desktop Sessions to remote computers over a network
• Virtual Desktops, server in server room running full computer instance presenting only graphical output over a network

[glunday]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

The problem is there is more than one way to do very similar things and figuring out what one is best for your situation is the key.

 

The 3 main types order from distance from the hosting server plus fully virtualized are:

• Microsoft Multipoint Server, host computer in same room with clients directly connected
• Remote Desktop Services, server in server room presenting either Applications or full desktop sessions to remote computers over a network
• Virtual Desktops, server in server room running full computer instance presenting only graphical output over a network

multipoint sounds like what you want to do but i think with how much needs are changing that would be quickly outgrown. or be really expensive to implement if you need a large amount of users. RDS or virtual desktops is a little more scaleable and more efficient alot of the time the more users you add to it.

[NoRomanBatmansAllowed]

1 hour ago, glunday said:

we use a system like this at the data center i work at. we use a program called vmware. the way it works is there is basicly a control computer, and you have many worker computers. the control computer just turns on and off the worker computers as needed. as for connecting them to the screens you can use a thunderbolt or a usb 3.0 doc to do that.

 

BTW bob51zhang it can get very expensive but we use older Super micro AMD machines for our work. you can get 16 core cpus for about 50$ and you could probably get a decent 2 cpu machine used for about 100-150. that is much less for a computer lab than individual computers but you also need to hire someone to run it.

But how strong are the cores? 

I'm still assuming that it'll still result in a slow experience to the end user (especially when demand is high)

[glunday]

1 minute ago, bob51zhang said:

But how strong are the cores? 

I'm still assuming that it'll still result in a slow experience to the end user (especially when demand is high)

you can't tell a difference between it and any other remote connection. and we have our VMs as full blown servers virtualized. when it comes to the VM environment AMD really holds their own since they throw more cores at the problem and VMs unlike gaming scale well to more cores.

[leadeater]

2 minutes ago, glunday said:

multipoint sounds like what you want to do but i think with how much needs are changing that would be quickly outgrown. or be really expensive to implement if you need a large amount of users. RDS or virtual desktops is a little more scaleable and more efficient alot of the time the more users you add to it.

I agree about the Multipoint server but it does look like with the newer version it supports VMs etc. I honestly haven't had much to do with it or looked at it recently till now so I can't give you much insight other than it exists.

 

At work we use RDS RemoteApps and some Full Desktop Sessions, we're a university so have 5000 staff and about 30k-35k students.

 

We are also just starting up a VDI proof of concept for the second time, first time which was a few years ago it was concluded that at the time it was a bad idea. This current PoC is going to cost around $350k and is only for a very small test group.

[Electronics Wizardy]

10 minutes ago, Cubed_ said:

Could you explain some of those points a bit more?  How vms can share cores, different processors, why I'd need a beefy san etc.. Right now all the computers conect to the school domain via ethernet in windows 7.. Can't I just make vms that connect to the domain? 

If a vm need to use the cpu, it will use it like any other process, if it doesn't need it, it won't use it. Try it for your self. Get virtual box and make a vm with all your cores and your cpu usage won't be maxed.

 

You want a san to store the data for the vm's. You will still use your existing domain server, this is a better file server, and will let you have multiple hosts.

[glunday]

1 minute ago, leadeater said:

I agree about the Multipoint server but it does look like with the newer version it supports VMs etc. I honestly haven't had much to do with it or looked at it recently till now so I can't give you much insight other than it exists.

 

At work we use RDS RemoteApps and some Full Desktop Sessions, we're a university so have 5000 staff and about 30k-35k students.

 

We are also just starting up a VDI proof of concept for the second time, first time which was a few years ago it was concluded that at the time it was a bad idea. This current PoC is going to cost around $350k and is only for a very small test group.

ya the problem is EVERYONE'S needs are different so you have to know enough about the options as well as what you want to do in order to get a good end result.