Unused servers

[Daniel Sanford]

In our program we were utilizing several servers for hosting vms through VMWare on GNS3. However we recently had to stop due to the increase in VMWare licensing costs. So, now we have several servers that are essentially unused. We are considering other types of vm software, but I wanted to see if I could get any good ideas of how we could utilize them outside of VMs to help with student learning. Any input would be appreciated.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

I was going to say: you could always just make Proxmox clusters out of them.

I also always have one really old clunker, that's still complete, laying about so I can show my students "just what exactly IS a server?". Doesn't matter that the R720 is 12-15 years old, the concepts still apply.

 

[Hemlock]

We have a dedicated lab with 20 rack Dell R620 servers that are used for a specific course geared around Server+.
We do lots of Hyper-V as we have access to Windows Server OS's through our Microsoft subscription to Azure Dev Tools to Teaching. (Free)
But I gotta say, the students love this course because they get to touch real rack equipment. We have 5 racks with 4 servers on each rack.
We use a KVM to access the servers.
But once they are booted, they can use Remote Desktop to login to the server remotely from their classroom workstation.
If they need access to the real server itself, they can walk up to the keyboard and mouse.
The servers are crazy old, but it's the foundation things they learn that is key.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

That's a wonderful setup, Hemlock.

 

[Rick Butler]

The one thing about servers is that, if properly maintained, they just keep going and going and going.

I still have some Dell PowerEdge T410s that still hold up our on-prem infrastructure, which we'll retire before too too long, although one might say they've been in operation for too, too long. I've built a HCI out of Dell Minis, to teach the concepts of clustered computing.

After Broadcom's acquisition of VMWare, we might see some changes in their pricing (probably more expensive), but I've never, really been a fan of VMWare - mostly because they charged the same for licensing for academic institutions, which to me, is asinine (or at least they did when I monkeyed with it). Now, for virtualizing, I would just teach QEMU/KVM for Linux platforms, HyperV on Windows, and VirtualBox to teach the concepts. Sure, you lose the advanced enterprise management stuff, but to me, a 0-2 year shouldn't be touching that stuff anyway.

But I'll agree with Tess here, having a couple old bare metals at the ready.

Because, remember this:

There's no such thing as the cloud - it's just someone else's computer. And the cloud is made up of servers.

/r

 

[jasoneckert]

In a physical lab, provisioning a bare metal server (e.g., with Proxmox) and configuring iDRAC or iLO is a valuable skill for IT students.
If, however, your students could benefit from building some upper body strength, I suggest: https://www.cloudfest.com/world-server-throwing-championship

 

[Steve Schofield]

Spent many years doing vmware and sad to see the journey downhill. Proxmox, hyperv in a classroom setting would provide hands on. Locally I use UTM and vmware fusion on an arm based MacBook. On win10 hyperv is sufficient. For enterprise customers there is no clear path away from vmware immediately, maybe nutanix or redhat openshift virtualization

 

[Tess Sluijter]

On win10 hyperv is sufficient.

On Windows, Hyper-V provides a lot better performance and power management than VirtualBox. From my N=1 empirical tests -> https://github.com/unixerius/DSO/issues/9

The biggest bottleneck appears to be I/O, potentially both in network and in storage.