Alec Ten Harmsel <a...@alectenharmsel.com> writes:

> 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.

True, that's for testing when you do know that the disk space will not
be used and have no trouble when it is.  When you have the VMs in
production and users (employees) using them, you don't know when they
will run out of disk space and trouble ensues.

> 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.

How do you overcommit disk space and then shrink the VMs automatically
when disk usage gets lower again?

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