On Monday, January 18, 2016 09:45:28 PM Alec Ten Harmsel wrote: > On Tue, Jan 19, 2016 at 01:46:45AM +0100, lee wrote: > > "J. Roeleveld" <jo...@antarean.org> writes: > > > On Monday, January 18, 2016 02:02:27 AM lee wrote: > > >> "J. Roeleveld" <jo...@antarean.org> writes: > > >> > On 17 January 2016 18:35:20 CET, Mick <michaelkintz...@gmail.com> > > >> > wrote: > > >> > > > >> > [...] > > >> > > > >> >>I use the icaclient provided by Citrix to access my virtual desktop > > >> >>at > > >> >>work, > > >> >>but have never tried to set up something similar at home. What > > >> >>opensource > > >> >>software would I need for this? Is there a wiki somewhere to follow? > > >> >> > > >> > I'd love to do this myself as well. > > >> > > > >> > Citrix sells the full package as 'XenDesktop'. To do it yourself you > > >> > need > > >> > a VMserver (Xen or similar) and a remote desktop tool that hooks into > > >> > the > > >> > VM display. (Spice or VNC) > > >> > > > >> > Then you need some way of authenticating users and providing access > > >> > to the > > >> > client software. [...] > > >> > > >> You would have a full VM for each user? > > > > > > Yes > > > > > >> That would be a huge waste of resources, > > > > > > Diskspace and CPU can easily be overcommitted. > > > > Overcommitting disk space sounds like a very bad idea. Overcommitting > > memory is not possible with xen. > > Depends on how the load is. Right now I have a 500GB HDD at work. I use > VirtualBox and vagrant for testing various software. Every VM in > VirtualBox gets a 50GB hard disk, and I generally have 7 or 8 at a time. > Add in all the other stuff on my system, which includes a 200GB dataset, > and the disk is overcommitted. Of course, none of the VirtualBox disks > use anywhere near 50GB. > > All Joost is saying is that most resources can be overcommitted, since > all the users will not be using all their resources at the same time.
If disk-space is considered too expensive, you could even have every VM use the same base image. And have them store only the differences of the disk. eg: 1) Create a VM 2) Snapshot the disk (with the VM shutdown) 3) create a new VM based on the snapshot Repeat 2 and 3 for as many clones you want. Most installs don't change that much when dealing with standardized desktops. -- Joost