VIRTUALISATION IN LEARNING

Roseville College

Riverview

Monte Sant’ AngeloMercy College

• Citrix XenApp & XenDesktop – Roseville College (James Stewart)

• VMWare View – Riverview (Alex Gibson) • VMWare View vs Citrix XenApp trial –

Monte Sant’ Angelo (Mark McLennan)• Question and Answers

AGENDA

ROSEVILLE COLLEGE

• Each student has their own laptop (BYOT), so lack of SOE exists

• Recognition that whilst in theory it is nice that students choose the appropriate application to create a piece of work that demonstrates their understanding of a concept, the reality is that standard application suits are necessary to teach certain subjects– Music

• Sibelius• Acid

– TAS• Photoshop• Illustrator

WHY VIRTUALISATION?

• Not feasible to try and install each piece of software on individual machines

• How do we handle students who lose their laptop and bring another home device. Lesson interruptions to reinstall software

• No guarantee that student machines have the capabilities to run large software suites such as Creative Suite CS6

• Licencing restrictions. Many software vendors don’t allow the installation of educational software on student personal devices

WHY VIRTUALISATION?

• The main requirement was to provide virtualisation at the application layer, not desktop layer. A big focus of BYOT is personalisation of learning, and we wanted virtual applications to be more of an extension of the student’s laptop, not found on a remote desktop.

• Needed to handed a whole year group (max 120 students) simultaneously with minimal performance drop

• Needed to be able to run large, graphics and multimedia based applications (Adobe CS6, Acid)

OUR REQUIREMENTS

• Needed to work seamless both onsite and over the Internet at home (assuming at least a good 3G or DSL line at home)

• Fast application loading• Application preference remembering• Support of local hardware, including saving to local

computer hard drives, webcam and USB support• Web portal for application access, as well as ability to

use local shortcuts• Compatible with iOS, Android, Windows Mobile and

Chrome OS.

OUR REQUIREMENTS

• NetStrategy tasked withinvestigating current and upcoming technologies in mid-2012 and to demonstrate to Roseville College a pilot build that best met the stated requirements

• A hybrid solution of Citrix XenApp and XenDesktop running on VMWare VSphere server backend proposed

• Primary reason for Citrix is that is allowed for application virtualisation focus, whereas Windows Remote Desktop and VMWare View were more traditional desktop focused

WHY CITRIX

• 3 x Dell R720 servers– Dual Xeon E-2690 2.9Ghz CPUs, 256Gb RAM, dual 10GB

NICs, dual 600Gb SAS local HDDs

• 1 x Dell EqualLogic PS6110XS SAS/SSD Hybrid SAN (13TB storage)

• Citrix XenDesktop Concurrent Enterprise Licence for 120 users

• Microsoft Windows 2008 R2 Remote Desktop Services

• NetStrategy Professional Services

INFRASTRUCTURE

• XenApp (Windows 2008 R2) is used for:– Simple applications that don’t require isolation

such as Microsoft Office, Geometer’sSketchPad, Inspiration

• XenDesktop (Windows 7) is used for:– More complex applications that require

isolation, such as Creative Suite CS6 (which requires administrative rights on XenApp),

– Heavy multimedia apps that require driver level access to the OS such as Acid Studio

• App Store– Portal access that presents available XenApp

and XenDesktop apps in one location

INFRASTRUCTURE

• All 7-12 students have their own personal laptop (BYOT)

• 2012 saw 4 computer specialist labs at over 90% utilisation

• 2013 has 2 computer specialist labs (one TAS, one Music) at less than 50% utilisation

• Students and teachers are now using virtualised applications on personal laptops instead of using computer labs

• Students can now access all required software from home on their devices

SUPPORTING LEARNING

• Currently investigating and testing changing TAS lab to a universal dock system where students can plug their laptops in and use their device with large widescreen monitor and graphics tablets for graphic design and multimedia

• Investigating the use of Citrix ShareFile to work hand in hand with XenApp/XenDesktop as a shared repository available to all College members on all devices.

SUPPORTING LEARNING – FUTURE

• Citrix is a complicated beast. You need very good in-house or very good outsourced technical services

• Receiver capabilities differ. Mac and Android receiver versions lag a little behind Windows and iOS versions

• Some applications just won’t place nice. Sibelius 6 is one such example

• Its amazing what 3G networks can support• Students will always find a way to break something

that you never thought possible, or can’t replicate in testing

LESSONS LEARNT

• A well designed virtualisation solution is expensive, but worth it!

• So far, it is proving as a successful alternative to a school owned 1:1 fleet with SOE

LESSONS LEARNT

DEMO - ROSEVILLE

https://myapps.roseville.nsw.edu.au

ST IGNATIUS’ COLLEGE, RIVERVIEW

WHY VIRTUALISATION?

• Brian Madden paradox… VDI has become TS

• Choice between operating systems – Desktop OS rather than App delivered from a Server OS

• More flexible application support. E.g. Solid Edge

• Ability to be flexible and agile about student devices.

• Licensing cost (at the time).

• In my opinion administration and management is easier than Citrix.

WHY VDI OVER TS?

• MacBook Airs with no BootCamp meant Vmware View needed to improve.

• VDI boot times and overall performance was not impressive.

New Setup:• Floating dynamic pools, using the local SSD storage.• Profiles sync back to SAN storage.• Always on desktops eliminates boot storms and

speeds up time to connect.• VMware Windows 7 Optimisation guide.

RE-IMPLEMENTATION

• 3 x HP BL490c G7 blades– Dual Xeon X5650 2.67 Ghz, 198GB RAM, 600GB FusionIO SSD local storage

(91,000IOPS)

• Current number of Desktops: 215 *

• Max concurrent in use: 157

• Benchmarked max: ~210 (Win7 4GB RAM)- Host paging to disk (SSD) seen at around 90 desktops per host

• Tools: VMware View Planner, IOMeter

* 85 x Windows XP 2GB RAM

INFRASTRUCTURE/BENCHMARKS

• Efficient learning – accessible anywhere, anytime. Access to all required network resources

• Move to BYOT – teachers can be confident in delivering a lesson using devices

• Primary place for school work

IMPACT ON LEARNING

• Extending life of lab machines by booting directly into Virtual Desktops

• Deploying thin clients in some areas, e.g. Opacs machines

• Wait for the technology to mature further

• VMWare Horizon

Where to next? Making better use of our VDI

MONTE SANT’ ANGELOMERCY COLLEGE

VS

• Monte, a “Mac” School:– ~1200 Students– ~150 Staff– 1450 Macs

• 2009/10 White Macbook’s (10.6.x) > 2012 MacAir’s (10.8.x)

• Except for TAS:– 1.5 PC Labs (45 Win7 PCs)– “2D Design Tools”

• Laser Cutter, 3D Prototyper

• … And the Business Office

WHY VIRTUALISATION ?

Find a solution that:• Delivers the required application(s)• On our Network Infrastructure• Within our tiny budget• With the ability to scale up and out in the future

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

Find a solution that:• Delivers the required application(s)

– On campus or at home– Fast– With local and remote file access– With local USB (file and print)– Backed Up– …access to the internet…

• On our Network Infrastructure• Within our tiny budget• With the ability to scale up and out in the future

GENERAL REQUIREMENTS

“60 concurrent users,

Equivalent Application Functionality,

For less than the cost of a PC Lab”

MISSION

Vendors

Write Criteria/Requirements

Build VMWare PoC

Build Citrix PoC

Initial Testing

Student Test Round 1

Tweaking / Refining

Student Test Round 2

Decision ?

PROCESS

• Environment• Delivered Applications• User Experience:

– Complexity– Start up Time– Application Performance

http://bit.ly/ZbbXDt

DEFINING CRITERIA

• Solution Functionality:– File Access– USB/External Devices– Printing– Internet Access– Native File Association

http://bit.ly/ZbbXDt

DEFINING CRITERIA

• Solution Complexity:– Administrative Overhead– Application/SOE Maintenance– Backup/Restore and DR

• Solution ‘Client Robustness’:– Performance over slow internet– …over ‘intermittent’ internet– Mac sleep/wake cycle

http://bit.ly/ZbbXDt

DEFINING CRITERIA

• Future Proofing:– Scaling up, Scaling out– Move to ‘cloud’ ?

• Client Management• Solution Cost:

– ROI• Licencing (Upfront and Recurring)• Applications

http://bit.ly/ZbbXDt

DEFINING CRITERIA

VMWare – Horizon View 5.21 x Dell R710 – ESXi 5.1

(x5680 3.33Ghz 2 x 6 Cores, 128Gb, Internal SAS, iSCSI to SAN)

2 x Win2k8 Server VMs (On Production VM Environment)– View Connection Server– View Composer– View Transfer Server– SQL Server

N x Win7 Desktop VMs

Extreme x670 10Gb Core Extreme x350 1Gb Edge

Dell EqualLogic PS6110xv Motorola AP7131

POC BUILD - VMWARE

Citrix1 x Dell R710 – Win2k8

(x5680 3.33Ghz 2 x 6 Cores, 128Gb, Internal SAS, iSCSI to SAN)

5 x Win2k8 Server VMs (On Production VM Environment)– Licence Server– StoreFront– Streaming Profiler– Netscaler– App Center

Extreme x670 10Gb Core Extreme x350 1Gb Edge

Dell EqualLogic PS6110xv Motorola AP7131

POC BUILD - CITRIX

• User Testing• Student Survey

GATHERING FEEDBACK

DECISION

?VMWare:

P:• Performance• Synergy (already VMWare backend)

• Desktop/Application Management

M:• Boot up time• Another SOE• Scalable limit

I:• Teach ‘Windows Skills’• Horizon Suite

Citrix:P:• Seamless• Fast start up• XenApp and XenDesktop• Theoretically scales well

M:• Fine tuning applications• Whole new backend to maintain

I:• Citrix ecosystem of products

Alex Gibson – awgibson@riverview.nsw.edu.au

James Stewart – jstewart@roseville.nsw.edu.au

Mark McLennan - mmclennan@monte.nsw.edu.au

QUESTIONS & ANSWERS