Hi Ariel, Thanks for your interest in using VCL! We're happy to help you get it installed and running.
VM "slots" are predefined as individual computers that have their own RAM and core count assigned. These are each assigned to VM hosts (or a vCenter instance) by an admin so that VMs are not overprovisioned. These VMs can end up having images deployed to them that don't use the full amount of RAM or cores assigned to the VM (the amount of RAM and cores a reservation gets is a property of each image). To gain some flexibilty, the total of all VMs assigned to a host or vCenter instance can be more than what is actually available on the host. VCL then will check that RAM will not be overbooked before actually assigning a VM to a reservation. The short answer is that it won't overbook RAM but will overbook cores, and it's up to the VCL admins to manage how much the cores can be overbooked by how VMs are assigned to hosts. VMs are initially spun up at their first reservation. Though they can be configured to be unregistered and powered off at the end of reservations, they are typically configured to be deployed with an automatically selected image at the end of a reservation. This could be called "hot standby". This is done so that the next time someone makes a reservation, there should hopefully already be one deployed with the desired image, and the user won't have to wait on the full deploy time for the reservation to be ready. Of course, if there are more images than VMs available, it's possible there won't already be one with the desired image in hot standby. Yes, VCL can utilize vCenter. I don't know of anyone using it in production currently. So, I'm not sure how well support for that has been maintained. But, we'd be happy to get any bugs patched if they are found. With or without vCenter, VCL does use linked clones to save on storage. I actually just got Guacamole working fairly well in our installation a few weeks ago. It's not something I'd consider fully baked yet but could provide information on how to get it set up. Josh On Tuesday, April 28, 2020 11:39:27 AM EDT MARTINEZ, ARIEL wrote: > Hello, > > I have a few questions regarding VCL. It looks like VMs are spun up > dynamically whenever there is a reservation. If so, does VCL have a way of > checking available resources on compute/storage so that no new reservations > are allowed if they cannot be handled? Another question is can VCL take > advantage of vCenter functionality natively (DRS, vMotion, Linked Clones) > giving dynamic allocation of VMs and linked clones to save on storage > requirements? And lastly, I have read through the mailing list regarding > HTML5 client to remove the dependence on RDP for Windows based VMs. The > Apache Guacamole project looks promising and I was wondering if anyone has > been able to integrate this or any other open soure gateway into VCL to > offer HTML5 support? > > Thanks. > > > ________________________________ > This email may contain confidential material. If you were not an intended > recipient, please notify the sender and delete all copies. Eco-Tip: Think > green before you print. -- ------------------------------- Josh Thompson Systems Programmer Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) North Carolina State University [email protected] 919-515-5323 my GPG/PGP key can be found at www.keyserver.net All electronic mail messages in connection with State business which are sent to or received by this account are subject to the NC Public Records Law and may be disclosed to third parties.
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