This is a long shot, but have we considered actually approaching Microsoft for a donation of some licenses or even MSDN? Not that it's my preference to entertain trolls on their own bridges, their nature notwithstanding they tend to like getting their software into learning contexts.
- Alex On Wed, Feb 12, 2014 at 6:32 PM, Mark Jenkins <[email protected]> wrote: > Most VM systems actually handle this quite well. >> >> Turning up a bunch of WinXP/Win7 VMs that are all running the same >> software actually chews up a *lot* less memory than you'd expect because >> of this feature. >> > > Wow, didn't know that existed. So freaking cool! > > Sounds like this may be very relevant to the discussion I was having with > Ian last night re Cyber Defense Challenge ridiculous RAM requirements as > well. > > > Also, logging multiple users into a single Windows Server isn't anything >> like UNIX - that's a Windows feature called Terminal Server, which >> requires separate, additional licensing, and requires significant >> expertise in Terminal Server to configure correctly. >> > > Thanks for letting me know that I should never bother, sticking with > unix-like systems for true multi-user knowing this! > > Attention Skullspace donors -- forget what I said -- don't throw your > money away to the licensing on Terminal Server, as it sounds so broken that > the admin labour will *never* be there to put it to use. > > Probably easier to scale a Windows lab up in the Skullspace setting by > calling for with machines with hard drives and using broadcast ghosting. > > Though, at the end of day, after all the admin work to do this, it seems > to me there should be a startup performance advantage with Terminal Server > over the multiple-VM approach? > > You mention a 4-5 hour deploy time -- is that due to the system working > hard to find shared pages between VMs? That's what it seems like we're > talking about with the KVM implementation, following your kernel doc link > and looking at what it links to: > http://lwn.net/Articles/306704/ > http://lwn.net/Articles/330589/ > > These describes the whole damn thing *searching* for shared pages between > VMs and comparing them with SHA1 hashes which is pretty intense! You get at > lot of shared pages automatically when things are happening all under one > operating system that has active knowledge over its own pages. > > Never realized quite how spoiled I am being a unixen for my entire adult > life. > > And until a few years ago, I didn't realize how spoiled the FreeBSD and > OpenBSD folks have been for a long time with access to containers (one > kernel, many well isolated userlands where root can be safely used) until I > started playing with the less mature LXC (linux containers) > http://linuxcontainers.org/ > . > > One kernel to rule them all, and in the darkness page them. > > > Mark > _______________________________________________ > SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List > Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss > Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/ >
_______________________________________________ SkullSpace Discuss Mailing List Help: http://www.skullspace.ca/wiki/index.php/Mailing_List#Discuss Archive: https://groups.google.com/group/skullspace-discuss-archive/
