Agenda for the meeting

  1. Status of various builds on top of base- Brian and Jon
  2. Concerns about Applications Data Folder and Mirroring – Lisa and Jon
  3. Licensing update – Patrick or Jon
  4. Download server update
  5. Timeline for moving things project forward

Attending:

  • Jon
  • Brian
  • Blake
  • Patrick
  • Lisa

Heather had communicated she had a prior commitment and was unable to attend.

Action Items:

25%

Task List

  1. handler

    Blake to produce updated Base VM - Thu 4/1

    Priority MEDIUM
    bskinner@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:02
  2. handler

    Brian to make Admin Staff VM - Thu 4/8

    Priority MEDIUM
    bbulmer@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:03
  3. handler

    Brian to send Blake the Security Policy - Fri 3/19

    Priority MEDIUM
    bblumer@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:01
  4. handler

    Jon to make Student VM - Thu 4/8

    Priority MEDIUM
    jmhunt@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:02
  5. handler

    Blake to explore Mirroring My Documents and Desktop on Windows host under VMware Workstation

    Priority MEDIUM
    jmhunt@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:17
  6. handler

    Lisa to send Blake url (placeholder) for Base VM launch page - asap

    Priority MEDIUM
    lmrobin@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:27
  7. handler

    Jon to send Meeting Minutes

    Priority MEDIUM
    jmhunt@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:28
  8. handler

    Jon to schedule next meeting

    Priority MEDIUM
    jmhunt@mit.edu
    Mar 23, 2010 11:28

Status of various builds on top of base- Brian and Jon

Student build based on base is proceeding.  One learning is that it takes a lot of time to install everything 4-8 hours minimum, so we need to decide how we are going to rev versions for semester (or other periodic basis) updates.  Probably makes sense to make the same changes as are made to the base for several revisions and then on a longer term reset with a new base. 

SWRT agreed to document step by step all changes made to the base so they could be replicated on the subsequent VM builds.

Admin staff build - Brian apologized for not being farther along.  He has finally freed up some time to work on this and other projects.  Brian has spoken with Mike from ITSS and under the covers, security for Win7 has not changed significantly from XP, so we can use the same security policy as created for the Dell image.  Brian will get this to Blake by Friday.

Concerns about application data and mirroring

Lisa shared concerns that the help desk has of users storing email in the AppData folder (i.e. default location where Outlook stores PST files).  We agreed to leverage the Group Policy setting to only allow OST files (Exchange) and that while people can go and change the registry to undo this, that is reasonable acceptance of the risk.

Jon has been unable to get mirroring working with a Windows host in VMware Workstation.  This appears to be a Mac only feature.  Blake and Patrick believe this should still work, but will require hand manipulation of the VMX (VM configuration file) to get the correct host paths working.  Blake will explore this.  Lisa's preference is to provide separate VM downloads for the different configurations for Admin Staff and Student VMs.  We are not using Mirroring on the base for security concerns.  Jon is concerned that we will need to document how to switch it because students will want to use the VM from multiple platforms and is concerned about the server storage space for additional 10GB distributions.

Licensing Update

Jon and Patrick were on a conference call with MIT's new Microsoft Rep who confirmed that any machine covered under the Upgrade license of the MSCA is entitled to run up to four Windows VMs on it.  White box machines (ones that never had a Windows or Mac OS license purchased with them) are not eligible under the MSCA and are thus not eligible to run these VMs.  We will need to notify the users as we do with the MSCA distribution, but do not need to require additional tracking of the VM downloads or count that to the limits in place for student downloads of Windows media under the MSCA.

Download Server Update

Thanks to OIS, we have a working large file download server that we can leverage to deploy the VMs.  https://downloads-mit-edu.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/  We can leverage access limitations using MIT Certificates based on the standard user, group, or MIT and the new feature is also to be able to limit access based on affiliation: student, staff (including faculty) and affiliate.  Patrick and Jon have the details on configuring this, but it is very similar to the standard .htaccess.mit configuration.

Additional Items Discussed

Decided to use Drupal to host the starting page because it will keep a more consistent look and feel for the pages they would link to from there. Lisa will get the url to Blake for the base image.

Decided to use single disk file rather than the 2GB snippets.

No major concerns from Help Desk regarding support, but they want the documentation in place sooner rather than later.

Prefer for distribution to have a stub page before the Admin VM that provides the warnings and sets expectations.

We brainstormed a list of documentation that needs to be generated.

  • 1st launch page
  • Which VM to choose (could be a wizard or page)?
  • Installation of VMware (already done)
  • What is Mirroring and Shared Folders
  • What settings have been modified on each VM?
  • Using VM between platforms (can come later)
  • What is a VM? (maybe already done)
  • Why not to store data in a VM?
  • How to change/upgrade VMs? Spring to Fall one (include checklist for old VM)
  • How to snapshot VM?
  • Licensing information MSCA details (white box/linux)
  • Printing documentation

Will need to coordinate with Heather on a plan.

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