Dell PowerEdge C1100 - Manual (Page 6)

Cloud Training in a Box: Inexpensive and Reproducible Training Environments for Cloud Solutions
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• If students are going to access the systems from Linux-based client systems, then SSH with X-
forwarding is an ideal solution; however, in most of Dell’s classrooms, the existing student
stations are running MS Windows.
• Access through a DRAC or BMC is a possibility (and remains so in the solution that Dell Global
Support and Deployment ultimately chose—in case remote access is needed for access to
system setup or other pre-OS configuration tasks) but often feels slow compared to more
advanced remote access solutions.
• VNC (Virtual Network Computing) is a possibility, but generally does not offer secure access by
default. Also, most of the VNC clients Dell considered required administrator privileges for
installation, which can be a problem at some sites.
Ultimately, Dell chose to use the open source FreeNX server on the hosts, and to install the NoMachines
nxclient (a free download) on the student systems, for the following reasons:
• It is encrypted and more tightly compressed than VNC.
• It offers secure access by default.
• The server can be installed from publicly-available repositories, making scripted installation
easier.
• The client can be installed without requiring administrator privileges on the student systems.
What Hardware?
The hardware requirements are minimal. The Hadoop requirements are the more substantial of the
two solutions and can be satisfied with 20 GB of disk space dedicated to the host, 20 GB of space for
the virtual machine serving as the admin node for our cloud, and 40 GB of space for each of 5 other
virtual machines. Each virtual machine functioned with 2 GB of RAM; Dell did not test for functionality
at lower amounts because of the abundance of RAM in the available systems.
Dell Global Support and Deployment finds that each lab station can be provided with a single server
that meets the following requirements:
• 16 GB of RAM
• 240 GB of storage
• Multicore CPUs with the VT extensions
These requirements are satisfied with a chassis of M605 blade servers already configured with RHEL6.
Implementation
Deployment of the training infrastructure involves the following steps:
1. Configuration of the Blade servers for remote access via their DRACs
2. Development of a Kickstart installation script (Appendix A: Sample Kickstart installation script)
for the virtual hosts that accomplishes each of the following deployment tasks:
• Installation of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 x86_64 with the appropriate virtualization
packages configured by default