getting started with the VCL

[Henry E Schaffer <he...@unity.ncsu.edu>]

 What's the best way to get started with the VCL after you (your campus,
organization, ...) are convinced that the VCL is worth doing  or at
least trying?

 My first suggestion is to use somebody else's VCL for the initial
experience.  I'm going to come back to this recommendation again and
again - a very important feature of the VCL architecture is how well  it
scales and how small is the "marginal cost" of scaling it up.  So  there
are strong economic incentives against starting/running a small
installation.

 This is particularly true when gaining the initial experience - when
you are just using one image (either on one blade or as one virtual
guest) at a time and finding out how it behaves, working through  some
of the peculiarities of the varieties of the RDP client, or perhaps of X
Windows, and the rest of the familiarization phase.  This is the user
experience.

 It would even be worth sharing in the cost of somebody else's VCL to
gain this experience, as the cost is certain to be considerably less
than the cost of the resources (hardware and especially personnel)
needed to start up and run an installation - no matter how small.

 NC State has a free "Demo account" which can be used for initial
familiarization.  It's *very* limited, but it is a start.  After
reading the FAQ and Help Docs about using RDP and connecting, then go to
the  VCL @ NC State home page  http://vcl.ncsu.edu/ and choose Use
Non-NCSU account, and then "I need to create an account".

 With that account you are a normal user, although limited in which
software you can access and the amount of time you can use the  account.
That still should give you a substantial amount of use.  Or, perhaps you
have connections with another organization or campus running a  VCL, and
can get an account there with more scope of use.

  I'll continue later with more suggestions.

--henry schaffer

Re: getting started with the VCL

[Henry E Schaffer <he...@unity.ncsu.edu>]

  Continuing with my suggestions on getting started:

  What about additional experience?  I'm thinking particularly of image
making and updating, and working through the VCL procedures to set up
groups - e.g. specify which group(s) of accounts can see and use those
images.  Privileges are very granular in the VCL architecture, and it is
common for us to give image making privileges to our faculty and/or
their TAs so they can tailor the image(s) used by their classes - and do
this without having to wait on the central staff. (Incidentally, this
also
decreases the work load on the central staff and so provides another
aspect of savings.)

  By the way, have you noticed the incremental approach I'm suggesting?
I have found that this approach often works extremely well, smoothing
the way as well as decreasing costs.

  Here, again, the best strategy would be to ask to use somebody else's
VCL and ask for these privileges.  This is still best even if there is a
requirement of cost sharing.  NC State currently offers this privilege
to other campuses in the UNC System, and sometimes beyond.

  We're now at the point where you, and your staff, have used and
experienced the VCL and have decided that you want to try it out in some
pilots to see how it works for you, before you make a decision to commit
to full use in production.  So you need to provide a VCL capability to
your students, staff, faculty, whoever will participate in this
exercise.

  How can you do this?  Or rather, what is the best way to do this?

  You certainly can go to http://cwiki.apache.org/VCL/ and follow the
links to download the VCL code, purchase all the hardware you need and
set up everything.

  This is possible, but expensive as well as taking a lot of effort.

  I'll continue later with a better approach.
-- 
--henry schaffer