Teaching IT Subjects with Real-World Software

Virtual IT Teaching Laboratory

Michael Rees

School of Information TechnologyBond University

mrees@bond.edu.au

Overview

• Problem with practical assessments– Software scope– Dedicated teaching labs

• Solution: use virtual teaching lab

• Pilot semester

• VITTL: Virtual IT Teaching Lab– Operation to date– Extensions

• Lessons learned and way ahead

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The Problem

• Make industrial-class software available for student practical assignments:– Licensing usually not a problem– Hardware/network support is a problem

• Physical teaching labs:– Dedicated machine for one software package

expensive– Shared installs are complex with interference

problems– Students need extensive access to labs outside

class– No administrator access– No permanent settings

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The Solution – Virtual Labs

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VMware Solution

Virtual Center

• VITTL administrator controls all aspects of the virtual laboratory:– start/stop virtual machines and change the

capacity of virtual devices– instantiate new virtual machines, make

clones and delete existing ones– monitor the performance of each virtual

machine and the overall loads on VITTL1 and 2

– trigger the migration (VMotion) of a virtual machine between VITTL 1 and 2

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Virtual Machine Images

• Students allocated one or more virtual machines per subject with virtual networks where needed

• Virtual machine images:– Built by lecturer to exact requirements:

• Base OS: students install and manage software• OS with required software installed

– Internet access for download/install– 24/7 access from any on-campus machine and via

Internet using Citrix server– Allow students administrator access (if needed)– Constant running for server work and compute-

intensive apps– Broken VMs replaced by clones in minutes

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VM Access

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• Any on-campus machine• Internet machine via Citrix

VITTL Experience To Date

• Pilot semester 082 (2 dedicated servers):– Web apps 20 x Winserver 2003– Computational Finance 6 x Windows XP

• Full production:– Used by 9 advanced IT subjects over

semesters 083, 091 and 092– Web apps, middleware, ecommerce, BI,

databases, modular programming– 50 to 100 VMs per semester– Mix of Windows XP, Vista, Server 2003 and

Ubuntu

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Discoveries

• Portability: students can demo problems/assignments on instructor machines in lecture rooms, labs and staff offices

• VITTL servers able to support more VMs than planned

• VITTL server main memory the limiting factor

• Take great care when showing students network adapter and firewall configurations

• Compute-intensive VMs run slower than expected

• Port access and virtual networks need careful planning

• Student acceptance very high

• Some IT students surprisingly lack machine admin skills

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Way Ahead for VITTL

• Extensions:– Automated VM cloning and deployment– Single sign-on accounts– Central VM connect for students

• Handover to central technical support:– Develop model VM

create/clone/deploy/monitor/teardown cycle– Archive and backup policy

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Resources

• Talk links at: – http://dotdolfin.com/talks/#qcec2009

• Virtual IT Teaching Lab site:– http://vittlproject.pbworks.com

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