QEMU/KVM
In the Old World virtualisation of servers in the CSE data centre and on lab computers was done using VMware products (ESXi, vSphere, VMware Workstation, etc.).
To homogenise the IT environment and reduce the number of technologies CSG needs to support, New World uses QEMU/KVM for all machine virtualisation.
There are two scenarios where virtual machines (VM's) are used:
- On a per-session basis by users/students logged in to lab computers, and
- In the CSE data centre to virtualise servers.
Lab computers
Lab computers have a directory, /usr/local/vmimages, where virtual machine disk images and their run-time configurations are stored.
VM's are run as copy-on-write (COW) instances of the images in the above-mentioned directory. When a VM instance terminates the COW instance disappears and the original disk image is unchanged for the next user.
Each VM disk image has a name ending in ".img" and a corresponding configuration file with the same name but ending in ".sh".
VM's are launched from the command line with the /usr/local/bin/vm script. If run without a VM name a list of all possible VM's is output. VM names are the disk image file names from /usr/local/vmimages minus the ".img" extension.