virtualbox.org

Hello.

On an Ubuntu host, what I would like to do is grant users a strict number of VMs each, each with a predefined and unalterable amount of CPUs, RAM and various system settings. However, I want the users to be free to manage their media, including creating and deleting disc images and mounting and unmounting images at will.

Is this even doable in VirtualBox? Everything seems to be tied together in VB to the point where either you allow everything or disallow everything, but maybe I'm missing something

Thanks.

That really has nothing to do with VirtualBox. What permissions a user has on the host OS is controlled by the OS running on the host. If the user has permission to create, modify and delete files I can't see how you can prevent that user from modifying the vm config. If you restrict the permissions too severely the user will not be able to even run the vm.

Thanks for the reply.

Not to be contrary, but I think it has a lot to do with VirtualBox. Perhaps even everything to do with VirtualBox. Sure, with user permissions I can prevent a user from creating media or changing any settings on a VM, but that's not what I want to do.

Say user 'joe' is paying for 2 CPUs, 512MB RAM and 300GB hard drive space (completely arbitrary figures). I can easily restrict 'joe' to 300GB hard drive space via a Linux user quota. This is fairly simple.

I could create the VM with the specified parameters and have 'joe' contact me anytime changes need to be made to the VM, but this is simply cumbersome to both the user and myself and would require a dedicated support team in order to scale to many users.

I would like 'joe' to have access to modifying everything about a VM except parameters I specify, which would basically be anything involving the CPU or memory.

All I want to know is if this is possible with VirtualBox, and if so, how could it be done?