Thin Client for VirtualBox

[kortiz]

Hello all,
I manage some student labs at a University. We are considering moving some of our lab computer systems into a virtual environment. I have downloaded VirtualBox-3.2.10-66523-Win.exe and VirtualBox-3.2-3.2.10_66523_rhel5-1.x86_64 installed the software on servers and then installed several Virtual Operating Systems. What I would like to test next is a method whereby users can access these virtual computers remotely through some type of a "thin client", web browser, etc.. Can someone please point me when I can find information about this and possibly perform further tests?

I did a search in the forums but didn't find anything and VBOX_OEM_SALES_WW@oracle.com told me to post here.

thank you

[BillG]

What virtualization software you use is not as important as what OS you run in the vm. If you set up the vm so that it is connected to the network, it looks just like any other machine on the network. You can use any remote software which works with the OS running in the vm.

What OS do you run and what software do you use now? You should not need to change anything just because the target machine is a vm.

[sej7278]

I'd skip the thin client thinking and just use standard tools for remote access such as VNC, SSH+X11 forwarding, RDP, even citrix-ica.

you could use the VRDP (vrde) built into vbox if you don't want to run a service/daemon on the guests, but i don't think it will scale well for many users/vm's.

[SSCBrian]

I'd skip the thin client thinking and just use standard tools for remote access such as VNC, SSH+X11 forwarding, RDP, even citrix-ica.

Many thin-clients support all of those protocols. I highly recommend going thin-client where possible.

[kortiz]

What OS do you run and what software do you use now?

Thank you for the replies and suggestions.

Our lab computers currently have Window 7 with MS Office and many Engineering software packages (Solidworks, LabVIEW, MathCAD, Autodesk, Abaqus, ArcGIS, Bentley MicroStation, etc.). If I convert some of our actual computers to VM's then prefer to keep Windows 7.

As a matter of fact, we use Symantec Ghost to Image the lab computers. What would be really cool is if I could use our regular lab image (Windows 7 with all software) and put it into the VM's, but that's another topic.....

once again thank you for your time.

[BillG]

You would have to create a different image for the vms. The "hardware" of a virtual machine is quite different from the hardware of the host.