VDPilot: feasibility study of hosting virtual desktops for classroom labs within a federated university system. (1st January 2014)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Calyam, Prasad; Berryman, Alex; Welling, David; Mohan, Saravanan; Ramnath, Rajiv; Ramnathan, Jay
• Is Part Of: International journal of cloud computing. Volume 3:Number 2(2014)
• Page Start: 158
• Page End: 176
• Publication Date: 2014-01-01
• Subjects: virtual desktops -- classroom labs -- VMware VDI -- Apache VCL -- user QoE measurement -- federated cloud service; Cloud computing -- Periodicals; 004.678205
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 2043-9989

Abstract

Providing pervasive access to expensive, computational software such as Matlab and SPSS has always been a logistical and licensing challenge for a faculty who want to train their students with industry standard software. In addition, the faculty who want to manage lab exercises, assignments and exams are led to use e-mail to send and receive large files, thus limiting their ability to access and assist in the work-in-progress of students. In this paper, we present the methodology and results from our 'VDPilot' feasibility study to address such challenges by hosting virtual desktops for classroom labs within a federated university system in Ohio. The study leverages universities' pre-existing high-speed network access at the regional-level in order to: 1) assess the user quality of experience (QoE) of accessing desktop applications remotely compared to physically going to a computing lab, and 2) analyse the challenges and requirements for a shared service amongst collaborating universities.