The Virtual Project

Objective

This project will bring together 3 separate related projects across IS&T involving the deployment of virtual machines (VMs) to the community into one shared framework and base that can be leveraged for each need and supported and maintained effectively by IS&T.

Background

Virtual machines provide a method for solving some difficult IT problems at MIT such as:

• How do we effectively provide access to certain Windows only applications to the Macintosh community?
• How can we effectively provide a consistent computing environment for students on their laptops across a wide variety or hardware and operating system choices?
• How can we provide a secure and reproducible base VM that departments, labs and centers (DLCs) can leverage for their own purposes and save the 4-8 hours of VM creation each time?

Three separate efforts/projects were started last fall in IS&T, one focused on the business application area, another focused on student computing and a third focused on the basic underlying steps.  As we shared information about these various approaches, it quickly became apparent that we should work together to avoid duplication of effort and provide a better service that would be easier to support for the community, so we formed the Virtual Project Team.

Team

• Jonathan Hunt - FSX in CSS (PM for Student VM Project)
• Lisa Robinson - Service Desk in CSS (Business App Project)
• Brian Bulmer - Departmental Services in CSS (Business App Project)
• Patrick McNeal - SWRT in ISDA (Base VM)
• Blake Skinner - SWRT in ISDA (Base VM)

Deliverables - DRAFT

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·        Discovery

o   Recommendations for specific VMs that would be useful to the MIT community

o   Maybe a minimal and ideal set

o   Technical information on what’s involved in setting them up and refreshing them

o   Recommended technical settings for the VMs around serialization and personalization after download

o   Issues, caveats, etc.

o   Security recommendations, if any

·        Delivery plan

o   Resources required to deliver a set of initial test VMs for the recommendations outlined above (who, time estimates, any special software required)

o    Service recommendations/requirements for downloading such VMs; do we have something they could be download from? Would it require a new server? Estimate of cost of such a  beast, etc.

o   Stakeholders, testing requirements, any initial documentation, the usual

·        Sustainability and Support plan

o   In your estimation, what would be on-going, periodic effort needed to refresh each of these VMs?

o   What would the appropriate refresh cycle be for each of them?

o   Where is there “flex” in this plan and where isn’t there? (For example, if MATLAB needs to be refreshed every 12 months because the license will stop working, there is no flex. If we would like to refresh Office every 12 months to keep people happy but it will continue to work regardless, there is flex.)

·        Business case

o   Help us articulate a business case of why this is a good idea

§  How much time are we saving MIT by investing time and resources centrally?

§  How much might we save in support costs by having these available for users?