IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Developing and Deploying at MIT Distributable Virtual Machines IT Partners Conference June 2, 2010

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Background of VMs at MIT  IS&T licensed VMware for MIT  December 2007  Thousands of staff & students at MIT started using VMware Workstation & Fusion  Departments started creating/using VMs  DUSP  IS&T  Sloan  more  Need a better VM for everyone

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines The Old Way – 2-8 hours  Create a VM  Install Windows  Apply Patches, Reboot, more patches, Reboot, even more patches (repeat)  Install software and configure  Copy VM files to new machines  Hope settings are right

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Downsides to the Old Way  Time consuming – 2-8 hours to create  Name conflicts  Windows SID collisions Problems adding to Windows domains  Windows machine name collisions  MAC Address conflicts  Identical user accounts (security risk)  Everyone’s VM is a little bit different  Support Nightmare

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Goals for Doing things Differently  Save time and effort  Creating VM  Installing & Configuring Software  Consistency (easier to support/troubleshoot)  Unique (accounts, SID, UUID & machine name)  Apply Best Practices including Security

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Approach for creating distributable VMs  Lots of different needs identified by multiple groups  Base Windows VM (SWRT)  Student VM (FSX & OEIT)  Business Applications (Business Help Desk)  Plus DLC VMs  Started several efforts until we discovered we were all working towards similar goals  Paused and brought the IS&T efforts together to provide a truly supportable and scalable Distributable Windows VM

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines What would be better?

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines The Future

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Distributable Windows VM  Windows bit  Best Practices Security Policy  Configured for MIT’s WAUS and patched  Generalized (unique SID and other identifiers)  Targeted Audiences  Base VM for customizing by DLC (IT Partners)  Student VM (students)  Administrative Staff (faculty & staff)

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Licensing for VM’s OS  Usage up to 4 Windows VM per machine covered under MSCA  Key Management Server (KMS) with Windows 7 makes this transparent for users  Has to be on MITnet (VPN counts) at least once every 180 days

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Base VM  Designed for Local Technical Experts to create custom DLC specific VMs  Windows 7 (1 GB RAM, 40 GB HD)  Security Policies  MIT WAUS (updates applied)  VirusScan & VPN installed  Print through Host’s default printer  Microsoft SysPrep to Generalize  VMware (.VMX) Config file generalized

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Base VM Demo of generalization structions+for+Generalizing+VM+for+deployment

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Student VM (Base VM +)  Student oriented or licensed software  Student Matlab  OpenOffice  NetBean & Eclipse  Emacs  And much more  Mirroring of Documents Folders  Helps keep user data off VM  Custom Background

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Student VM Demo of first launch

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Administrative Staff (Base VM +)  Faculty/Staff oriented or licensed software  Microsoft Outlook 2007  SAPgui  BrioQuery  Insert more  And much more  Mirroring of Document Folders  Helps keep user data off VM  Custom Background

IT Partners Conference – 6/2/2010 – Distributable Virtual Machines Questions?   Jim Cain – OEIT – Experimental Learning Environments Team   Jonathan Hunt – IS&T Faculty Student Experience Team   Blake Skinner – IS&T Software Release Team 