NCSU is seeing increasing interest in using VCL for day-to-day operational IT tasks. We are currently investigating the feasibility of using VCL to manage some of the university's ERP infrastructure. If things pan out, I envision a future version of Apache VCL to include some seriously cool configuration management features -- possibly some integration with Puppet, Chef, etc.
The current version (2.2.1) and the upcoming 2.3 already include functionality beyond HPC and VDI applications. One example... in the past year, NCSU has used VCL to migrate the data in our legacy campus-wide Groupwise email system to Google. We were supplied with a utility to migrate accounts and data from Groupwise to Google. Running this utility to migrate all of the data on a single computer or even a small farm of servers would have taken several months if not years. Turns out the main limiting factor was a throttle imposed by Google per IP address for the computers doing the migration. Using VCL, we created an image containing the utility and were able to easily load it on as many VMs as we needed. We loaded up approximately 60 VMs to perform the migration, let it run, and completed the migration in a fraction of the time it would have taken otherwise. Since we usually run the most current code available in production, we used the new server request feature in 2.3 to make the reservations though normal reservations would have also worked. Another project involves using Elluminate Live software (recently bought out by blackboard). The software has a manager node and 1 or more server nodes. We created a VCL image for the manager and one for the server. The manager is loaded as a very long-term reservation. I wrote a daemon in Perl which runs on the manager. It checks the number of upcoming sessions that need to be hosted by the servers and uses the VCL XML-RPC API to dynamically load additional servers as needed. It also ends server reservations when demand is reduced. Hope this helps, Andy On Wed, May 9, 2012 at 8:19 PM, Sanders, Arbin D <asand...@nccu.edu> wrote: > All,**** > > ** ** > > I am apologize in advance for posting to both groups but I think each one > has its own unique info and opinions. As NCCU goes into the new fiscal > year, I am looking at acquiring more hardware and software for NCCU VCL > project. Do any of you all have other uses for VCL other than HPC and > Virtual Desktops?**** > > ** ** > > Thanks in advance!**** > > ** ** > > *Arbin Darren Sanders***** > > **** > > IT Manager – Academic Computing**** > > North Carolina Central University**** > > 712 Cecil Street**** > > Suite 3014**** > > Durham, NC 27707**** > > 919.530.6307**** > > 919.530.5097 (Fax)**** > > ** ** > > *For the Latest ITS Updates and Tips Join Us Online** ** **[image: > Description: Description: Description: Description: > cid:image003.png@01CB6AD0.97665900]*<http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=66100342#!/pages/Durham-NC/NCCU-Eagle-Technical-Assistance-Center-ETAC/249508718552?v=info> > * *[image: Description: Description: Description: Description: > cid:image004.png@01CB6AD0.97665900] <http://twitter.com/NCCUETAC>**** > > **** > > CONFIDENTIALITY: This email (including any attachments) may contain > confidential, proprietary and privileged information, and unauthorized > disclosure or use is prohibited. If you received this email in error, > please notify the sender and delete this e-mail from your system.**** > > ** ** > > ______________________________________________________________________ > This email has been scanned by the Symantec Email Security.cloud service. > For more information please visit http://www.symanteccloud.com > ______________________________________________________________________ >
