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 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?
• How do we effectively provide access to Macintosh users needing to access financial data in SAPgui with IXOS and BrioQuery?  VMware provides a more user-friendly solution for Macintosh users needing these Windows only applications than is currently available through Citrix.
• How can we effectively provide a consistent computing environment for students on their laptops across a wide variety of hardware and operating system choices?

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)

Contact the team: pvm-project@mit.edu (mailto: pvm-project@mit.edu)

Deliverables - DRAFT

• Recommendation for specific set of VMs that would be useful to the community
  • Minimal and Ideal Set
  • Technical details on what is involved in setting up and refreshing them
  • Recommended technical settings for VM generalization and customization
  • Security Recommendations
• Resource estimates to deliver initial set of VMs (who, how much, to whom?)
• Service recommendation and requirements for downloading VMs
• Discussion with Stakeholders
• Sustainability plan
  • On going effort to maintain each VM
  • Appropriate refresh cycle
  • Where is there flexibility in the plan
• Estimate time savings for users of these VMs
• Estimate support cost savings by having these VMs

Project Notes and Documentation