I work for Cisco Systems but have been working on a Fellowship to help a non-profit called mcnc.org <[email protected]> support the State of North Carolina's Research and Educational Network (NCREN.NET <http://www.ncren.net>).
NCREN now connects all 115 school districts in the state which means the next problem is how to provide compute resources to 2.3Mil kids. I've been spending a lot of time using Amazon Web Services Cloud architecture (AWS <http://aws.amazon.com/>) in some experiments for K-12 support. Recently, I found SkoleLinux <http://www.skolelinux.org/en/> and was wondering if there has been any thought to building an optimized Debian-Edu/SkoleLinux Amazon Machine Image (AWS EC2 compute service AMI virtual appliances<To%20use%20Amazon%20EC2,%20you%20simply:%20%20%20%20%20%20*%20Create%20an%20Amazon%20Machine%20Image%20%28AMI%29%20containing%20your%20applications,%20libraries,%20data%20and%20associated%20configuration%20settings.%20Or%20use%20pre-configured,%20templated%20images%20to%20get%20up%20and%20running%20immediately.%20%20%20%20%20*%20Upload%20the%20AMI%20into%20Amazon%20S3.%20Amazon%20EC2%20provides%20tools%20that%20make%20storing%20the%20AMI%20simple.%20Amazon%20S3%20provides%20a%20safe,%20reliable%20and%20fast%20repository%20to%20store%20your%20images.>) ? I've done something akin to this using VMware Workstation, Ubuntu, and QEMU. - I used VMware Workstation to create an SkoleLinux virtual machine - Converted the resulting .VMDK VMware file to a .RAW file using Qemu. - Directions to use VMware & Qemu to create and upload a new Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for use in the AWS cloud.<http://thewebfellas.com/blog/2008/9/1/creating-an-new-ec2-ami-from-within-vmware-or-from-vmdk-files> - Lastly, "register" my AMI image with AWS so I could use it on their virtual machines = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = However, I'm no Linux guru by any stretch. Not sure if you've thought of this idea.... What if Debian-Edu/SkoleLinux were to produce an *optimized* Server & Client (LTSP, or Desktop Linux) and host the Server & Desktop on Amazon EC2/S3 cloud? Then anywhere AWS supports (primarily Europe & America) communities could initiate Debian-Edu/SkoleLinux servers (maybe clients also) at very low costs and much less complexity. Just an idea.. as AWS Education in the Cloud offer recently was pretty cool: *Apr 29, 2009* *AWS Goes To School With Programs For Educators, Researchers, and Students<http://aws.amazon.com/about-aws/whats-new/2009/04/29/aws-goes-to-school-with-programs-for-educators-researchers-and-students/> * *Amazon.com, Inc. announces AWS in Education, a set of programs that enable the academic community to easily leverage the benefits of Amazon Web Services for teaching and research. With AWS in Education, educators, academic researchers, and students worldwide can obtain free usage credits to tap into the on-demand infrastructure of Amazon Web Services to teach advanced courses, tackle research endeavors and explore new projects – tasks that previously would have required expensive investments in infrastructure. AWS in Education also provides self-directed learning resources on cloud computing for students. To sign up and begin using Amazon Web Services, and to apply for grants for usage credits, visit: http://aws.amazon.com/education* I'm going to cc my personal Yahoo Email ID on this but if anyone reads this and would like to talk more please contact me. Brian Mullan 919-392-2823
