The technical aspects of the project have always received positive feedback and excellent press, nationally and locally.  However, the scope of the project deviated quite a bit and it was not easy to collate data or gather meaningful information about the overall original project.

We’ve always said that we operate in a very honest way and I think that will show in the over-all MoLeNET Project dissemination, when it is released in December.

In January, I had a visit from Chris Hewitson, who is the research associate assigned to our project. He was really interested in thin.clusion and was therefor keen to see the research produce a report that reflects the innovation & sustainability elements.

Chris helped me revise the research action – he thought that original ones I had produced were far too in-depth and would generate too much research data for the requirements of the MoLeNET project – unfortunately, we are limited by both project time-scale & staffing hours.

So, I’ve revised the Research Question 1 action, to reduce the quantity of data capture – which will require less analysis.  I have also removed Research Question 2 and replaced it with a Case Study of the project, which should inform future developments and research into virtualization and thin client mobile/open learning models

The main infrastructure runs VMWare vSphere, whilst the provisioning of Virtual Machines, Thin Clients and Web Access is provided by Quest vWorkspace.

Information on the Hardware
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We purchased 3 x Dell R710 Servers that have the following specification;

2 x Intel Xeon X5550 2.66Ghz Processors
32GB RAM
8 x 146GB SAS 15k 2.5″ Hard Disks
4 x 1GB On-Board Broadcom 5709 Network Cards

The drives are partitioned as;

2 x 146 {DataStore 01}
3 x 146 {DataStore 02}
3 x 146 {Data Store 03}

These servers all run VMware vSphere 4 and split across these 3 servers is all of our virtual desktops and Quest Virtual Servers (explained later) are located.

We also re-allocated an existing Dell PowerEdge 1800 to run as our VMware Management Server, the specification for this server is;

Dual Xeon 5050 3.0gz
4GB Ram
2 x 250 SATA HDD (Raid 1)
2 x 1GB LAN

Information on the Setup
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The three Dell R710 servers all run VMware vSphere 4 and are accessed via the Management Server.

In addition to the management server, we have two (virtual) vWorkspace servers which handle desktop provisioning and web-based connections

1) virtual01 – Quest vWorkspace Broker
This is the server that allows us to provision desktops and allow access to the Virtual Desktops

2) virtual02 – Quest vWorkspace SecureIT/WEB-IT
This is the server that allows web-based connections from outside of the college

For allowing web-based access, we configured a FQDN of virtual.bsfc.ac.uk and obtained an SSL Certificate for this (provided by the Janet Certificate Service) – The SSL certificate was configured on our WEB-IT server and exported to Microsoft ISA.

We use Microsoft ISA to securely tunnel the connections from outside the college over to the internal WEB-IT server.

Day to Day Administration
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
vCenter is the main interface for working with the VMware infrastructure, whilst we use the Quest Broker Server to provision desktop’s and allow access to the Virtual Desktops (from either local thin clients or via the Quest vWorkspace web interface).

The vWorkspace SecureIT/WEB-IT server does not really have much interaction – once it’s configured to talk to your vWorkspace broker, it happily sits there just passing the connections across.

Creating a Virtual Desktop
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
To get us up and running quickly, we took a snapshot of one of our existing Windows XP PC’s – this run’s the college standard disk image. We used the VMware converter tool to convert the local PC into a VMware image.

Once the PC had been successfully converted to a VMWare image, we used vCenter to configure various options and remove software / settings that we wouldn’t want the Virtual Desktops to have.

As with all of our college computers – the virtual desktops run Sophos Anti-Virus and are locked down via Active Directory Group Policies.

Provisioning Desktops
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Once your VMWare XP Desktop image is at a level were you are happy to deploy, you need to convert it to a Template.

Once the image has been converted to a template, you can then provision your desktops – this is done on the Quest Broker Server.

In quick terms, we pick our template, tell it how many desktops we want to provision and then provision them. The servers are configured to automatically load balance the desktops between the 3 servers and between the 3 storage areas on each server.

If updates are required on the core XP Desktop image the template can be converted to a working machine and changes be made or software updated. Once complete it can be reconverted to a template and new Desktops provisioned from this updated template.

Allowing Internal Access
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
KGV Southport have graciously loaned us two Wyse unit’s for ‘Proof of Concept’. We have a Wyse S10 Thin Client Desktop unit and a Wyse X90 Laptop.

We setup and configured (with KGV’s assistance) the Wyse Device Manager and our DHCP server to allow thin clients to talk to our VMware infrastructure.

Configuring the X90 Laptop was very straightforward – I just had to alter the XP Embedded client to use our College WiFi and also set Internet Explorer to point to our Web-Interface. Once I rebooted the laptop it automatically loaded our vWorkspace web interface (attached WyseX90-Laptop.jpg).

I did however have to alter our vWorkspace broker to tell it that any internal requests should be run over HTTP whilst the external connections should still run on SSL.

Configuring the S10 was also straightforward – after I had configured Wyse Device Manager. altered some configuration files, and altered our DHCP server, I turned on the S10 and it automatically loaded our VMWare infrastructure (attached WyseS10-ThinClient.jpg).

I also had to make a change to the registry for vWorkspace which allowed the Wyse terminals to use our VMWare Infrastructure.

Allowing External Access
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
By Using Quest’s SecureIT/WEB-IT we can allow our users to get a full Windows XP desktop from home – this allows our users to have full (and SSL Secured) access to the college network. Users access the vWorkspace Login screen (attached vWorkspace-WebAccess.jpg) from https://virtual.bsfc.ac.uk/ and login with their college username and password – they are then automatically directed to an available Virtual Desktop in our BSFCFarm.

The main benefit of this, is that no data is stored on the users own device – all of the work and data is stored on the college network. Users also have the option of opening files from their own (local) computer inside the Virtual Desktop. We have also allowed staff to print to a central printer – so they can print documents from home and collect them when they come into college.

Comments
~~~~~~~
The system went in without any major problems and we are currently performing a testing phase ready for release to our learners.

We must also give continued thanks to Danny Caldwell and Martyn Coleman over at KGV who really helped us get to grips with this new system.

Purchased / Installed by;
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Tony Francis
Novus Group
t: 01260 292 500
tony.francis@novus.co.uk

Installed by; Andy Friar @ Novus.

Information on the Hardware
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
NexGen recommended, supplied and installed a solution from Ruckus (www.ruckuswireless.com).

We have 42 Access Points placed around the college that are all centrally managed by a Ruckus ‘Zone Director 1000′ Controller. The Access Points are Ruckus ‘ZoneFlex 7492 Access Points’. In high usage areas, such as areas with a lot of laptop trolleys, NexGen increased the number of access points around that area to give more density.

We can say with absolute certainty that we have 100% college coverage.

The solution we chose was based on an 11n solution – to future proof ourselves and provide our staff and students with the best possible solution. Rather than expand further on Ruckus’s 11n solution, here is a link to their 11n page.
http://www.ruckuswireless.com/technology/80211n

Based on the current infrastructure we can easily accommodate 1300 concurrent users on the system (30-45 devices per AP)

Integration into our Infrastructure
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
We run 2 SSID’s

College_Wireless & College_Cloud.

The “College_Wireless” SSID is a protected network for our existing college equipment – only Computer Services staff know the password for this SSID.

The “College_Cloud” is an open access SSID that staff and students can use to connect their own devices to get access to the internet – providing they are a current user of our college computer system.

i.e

When you connect via the “College_Cloud” you will automatically be assigned an IP Address from DHCP.

There is an access rule setup on the controller that says that any device is connected via College_Cloud can only talk to our Microsoft ISA server on port 8080… This means that they cannot see any other piece of equipment on our LAN.

When you try to open a web-browser, you are automatically prompted to enter your college UserID and Password – if you supply the credentials you are allowed to browse the internet.

This also ensures that we can have an open-access system without leaving it open to abuse from neighbours / unwanted users.

Comments
~~~~~~~
The system went in without any problems and we have already seen the benefits of the system over our old system (22 individual AP’s all with the same SSID – very crude but it did serve us well).

Also, I can’t speak highly enough of NexGen. Azam and Kevin were, and still are, a pleasure to deal with .

This has been pretty much the perfect project. The project was paid for with MoLeNET funds, involves negligible ongoing costs and will serve the college for many years as we have specified the brand new N standard with a density that will support an enormous number of concurrent devices.

Sony Ericsson Satio:

What can I say? This is touted as Sonys flagship cameraphone using the cybershot brand. Running the very mature Symbian S60 OS with a 12.1 megapixel camera and a strong heritage I expected a lot from this. Sadly I have been extremely disappointed. As a former K800i owner, I know that Sony are capable of producing an excellent phone capable of withstanding a lot of punishment with plenty of features that do exactly what you want of them. With the Satio, Sony seem to have gone backwards and concentrated on reducing costs rather than producing a quality product.

Just looking at it in the box I was surprised at just how cheap it looked. On taking it out and handling it it became even worse. Much of the phone is constructed out of plastic and sprayed with a silver finish to give the impression of metal, but it is done so badly that just by looking you can tell it is cheap plastic. Given a reasonable amount of use, I can see this coating flaking off very quickly. It feels very flimsy and you are scared to handle it too much, as it feels like it is going to fall apart in your hands.

I was unsure about the usability of the phone as it is touch screen only, but given the large 3.5″ screen I felt that there was enough room to have a usable virtual keyboard. The room is there, but the implementation of the keyboard is appalling. It isn’t accurate enough and at times struggles to keep up with a moderately fast typing speed. Even the camera doesn’t save this phone as the 12.1 megapixels do not seem to produce a good image, all they do is make the photo size larger. Given the price tag of nearly £500 for an unlocked version, Sony should hang their head in shame. It feels like a <£50 copy of a much better phone.

OK, my job is not really to provide a mobile phone review, but to put them through their paces and find out how well they manage to provide a desktop replacement service to our mobile users. Immediately this phone failed. We need something that will take some real-world use without falling apart, and as I mentioned earlier this is so flimsy I think you would be lucky to get a few months of use out of it before it fell to bits. The keyboard isn’t responsive enough to use comfortably. It didn’t seem to want to let me access our exchange server to retrieve email and it kept dropping my wireless connection. Using 3rd party tools I could connect to our vpn and then rdp to a desktop, but the frustration in doing so because it kept dropping the wireless connection just wasn’t worth the effort.

Overall Rating 2/10

Palm Pre:

Unable to tell you much about this phone other than it was quite comfortable to hold, felt well built but the keys on the keyboard were too small, fiddly and just seemed to be in the wrong position to use for anything other than small text messages or emails. The reason I can’t tell you any more than that is that when you switch it on it needs a sim card before you can do anything. Most phones that are being sold as a mobile computing device rather than a phone will at least let you get to the rest of the phones features without a sim, you just don’t get to make any calls. Not a major problem you might think, just pop a sim in and away you go.

Unfortunately it isn’t that simple. After inserting a sim card I was presented with a screen asking me to log in with my Palm Profile, or create a new one. Apparently you need a Palm Profile to access Palm services such as phone updates and the phone will not let you use it until a profile is registered with it. I tried to create a profile, which had to include some personal details like an email address, but on clicking finish I kept getting the error message that it couldn’t complete the registration as there was no wireless carrier. This was despite me being able to see a full signal. This could be because we bought a unlocked phone and used an Orange sim card in it, but O2 have the exclusive Palm contract in this country and maybe it didn’t like the Orange network. Registration must take place over a mobile network as you cannot get access to the WiFi settings until it is completed and you can get into the settings menus.

Even if I had managed to register a profile, the fact that the phone needs to be tied to one person renders it unsuitable for our purposes as we need to be able to hand the devices out to whoever needs one. We really couldn’t give out phones that were able to access another persons private details. My rating for this phone is purely based on suitability for our use and should not be taken as a reflection on the phone itself as I have not been able to use it. It may be a very good phone for an individuals use, but it is definitely not a corporate device.

Overall Rating 2/10

Nokia N900:

I was really looking forward to getting my hands on this much hyped ‘mobile computer’ from Nokia. As it is running Maemo 5 which is a derivative of Debian Linux you should be able to do pretty much anything with it. Sadly, it looks like Nokia have jumped the gun a bit and shipped it without giving developers enough time to get things running on it. Currently there are only 126 apps available on maemo.org and none of them provide the functionality we need. Currently there is no full Java support, no VPN support for anything other than OpenVPN, no RDP client, seems to have difficulty connecting to Exchange 2003.

The phone itself feels like a well made piece of kit, and what it can do it does very well indeed. The touch screen is nice and responsive, the qwerty keyboard has nicely sized keys and is easy to use. Everything that is built in is easy to use, and is very quick at loading.  As it stands though, in order to get full Java running on it, there is a developer forum that details how you have to ssh into the phone, download a 90 day trial version of Java for embedded devices, extract the tarball, install to a location and then edit config files using vi in order to set the Java class paths. Not exactly user friendly. Much of what this phone will be capable of is let down by similar problems. I downloaded the OpenVPN client from the Ovi marketplace to find that no icon appears anywhere and to use it you must drop to a command line to configure it and run. For a consumer hand-held device having to issue instructions to your end-user along the lines of add the repository, use apt-get install, open vi, open the correct config files and then explain why you can’t just type like in a word processor as vi requires explicit instructions to do anything, this is really no good. From an admin point of view, we would have to do this ourselves before handing them out and then deal with any slight issue the end user might come across as mostly they wouldn’t have a clue how to fix it meaning just supporting the devices would be very time consuming.

When the developers really get going with it and the number of apps increases, along with fixed installers that actually put an icon in place for you and don’t need you to go to command line this will be an astoundingly capable device. End users should be able to find apps to do just about everything, geeks will love the ability to tinker with every aspect of the device and the developers will be able to reach a larger audience without too much effort as they should be able to port their existing Linux apps to Meamo without too much effort. Hopefully Nokia are doing all they can to support developers and get this device up to its full potential. Until that happens it will remain a niche device only useful to developers and those who are interested in computing, but of no interest to those who just want to use a computer with a minimum of fuss.

Overall Rating 5/10

Just thought I would post an update as to our Virtual Service that we have had put in.

Following KGV’s lead (and expertise) we opted for Novus to install and configure our Virtual Service – KGV have dealt with Novus previously so that helped reduce the stress levels.

We opted to purchase the server hardware from Dell and I installed all of the hardware into a nice new shiny server cabinet, all very tidy and a nice KVM Switch to top it off.

Click here for a bigger version.

The actual service took 3 days to install, and tie into our existing infrastructure. We opted to run the service on a FQDN of https://virtual.bsfc.ac.uk/ ( this FQDN routes requests to an internal server via a Microsoft ISA rule – thus reducing the attack footprint ).

A few little niggles were found upon installation that seemed to be bugs with the version we were using (only recently released), these were;

a) Virtual Desktops not being automatically joined to the domain from the Sysprep file – we now have a working solution thanks to Danny @ KGV.

b) Virtual Desktops not defaulting to the domain on 1st startup – the temporary solution is to login to each VM as an admin and then it retains the settings – this is not practical when we roll out 100 desktops!. { Still working on this one }

I did howerver manage to break the system about half a day after the engineer had left – I tried to upgrade the web-interface to the latest version to see if that fixed the problems we had – and failed spectacularly!. The engineer was quite good about it and tried to explain that it wasnt my fault! (I think he was just being polite).

Danny from KGV came over and gave me a good few hours training on the system, including how best to create our desktop images and take snapshots of the servers, etc – he also had a run through of our system to make sure it was all running smoothly. He also helped me upgrade the Provisioning Client to the latest version (which will also be useful for Danny as they can have a look around our one before they upgrade their live version.).

Danny also fixed the problem of the Virtual Desktops not being automatically added to the domain – he wrote a brand new sysprep file and that seemed to work.

KGV also loaned us a Wyse S10 Thin Client Desktop and a Wyse X90 laptop – again Danny sent over the configuration files that they use and I had to fit them to suit.

I’m really impressed with the thin client desktop – I managed to get it up and running very quickly and then skinned it to look like the rest of our college machines.

Click here for a bigger version.

The laptop was very straightforward (after I remembered to turn off the write protection on the drive!) – I just had to alter the settings on the laptop to use our college wifi and also point at our Web Interface;

Click here for a bigger version.

Again I really must make a point of thanking Martyn & Danny at KGV. Their tolerance of my newbie questions has been great.

Quick update on where we are up to. Martyn wrote 0n 4/12/09 that we were expecting our mobile devices to start evaluating and I was looking forward to spending christmas playing with the new toys and finding out just what they are capable of. Unfortunately,our supplier failed to notify us that we needed to fill in a credit agreement before they would release the devices. This wouldn’t have been a problem, but the college was closed early just before the Christmas holidays due to the 1st lot of bad snow and then closed for a further week after the holidays because of the 2nd bad snowfall meaning I was unable to do anything to find out why we hadn’t received delivery.

But now some good news! We have received our order and testing can now begin. I have picked devices that represent a good cross section of what is available today. Each device is running a different OS and the aim is to be able to connect to a full desktop with the minimum of effort and the ability to use it comfortably. The device must be easy to configure as having to spend say, half an hour per device before we can give them to the end user is unacceptable.

The devices being evaluated are:

Samsung Omnia Pro B7610 – Windows mobile 6.5

Palm Pre – Palm OS

Toshiba Portege G910 – Windows Mobile 6.1

Sony Ericsson Satio – Symbian S60

Nokia N900 – Meamo 5 (Debian linux)

Motorola Milestone – Android 2.0

Apple Iphone 3GS – Iphone OSX

Elonex Websurfer – Windows XP

Archos 5 – Archos custom linux

I suppose it served us well when we had a small wireless platform, but as the times have moved on the system hasn’t stood up to the task, so we are very pleased with the solution that Nexgen have supplied.

At the same time we have also deployed a DHCP server, which will help us to move away from static IP addressing on our clients, this coupled with our ISA Server now allows students to connect their own devices to connect to the internet via our proxy server.

Thanks must go out to both Martyn and Danny from KGV who have been very very helpful in getting both of these up and running. Your support is gratefully appreciated (I promise I’ll sort your Moodle theme out ASAP).

Back to the topic, We have already seen that a few inquisitive students have connected their devices to the Public Access Wi-Fi , even better they have realised that you need to put in your network Username and Password to authenticate you onto the system.

We have had some great feedback from staff who have already noticed the difference in speed/reliability. We did come across a problem with some of our existing clients trying to connect to the new Wireless (which is named the same as our old wireless) – we needed to change the WPA algorithm from TKIP to AES and the devices then automatically connect.

With regards to the students using their own devices, we plan to mirror what Martyn and his team have done at KGV and offer some sessions on helping students connect their own devices.

Next up is our Virtual Infrastructure, which I for one am really eager to get stuck into.

Also not related to the project, we hosted the Merseyside ILT Conference on Thursday and a colleague from Skelmersdale College would like me to visit and help them out with their migration from Athens to Shibboleth (I also got a mention in this months RSC Northwest magazine!)

Our fleet of devices in use by Learning Support are being added to the network to increase the functionality of them in college and our tutors are now able to move their laptops freely around the college for the first time.

We have had our first session with the students and their devices at this morning’s break time. The outcome was mixed. We have had no problems adding Microsoft based devices to the student guest network, Symbian devices also worked, but we had a lot of problems with Apple devices. Annoyingly they all worked fine yesterday, but then that’s IT for you.

Next on the agenda is to expand our virtual infrastructure and to open up the virtual college desktops and applications to mobile devices in college. This has been delayed slightly as we still have not received the funding! I was hoping to have the money in the bank before I started writing out any more big orders, but time is moving on so the orders have been placed. My Finance Director will sleep much better when the money arrives.

Our selection of mobile devices will also arrive in the next few days which means we can start working with the Nursery / Health & Social Care students to see which device would be most suitable for work in their placements. The students here cannot wait to get their hands on them and give their opinions. There is a definite buzz in college at the moment about mobile devices and we are going to have to work hard to keep apace with expectations!