Re: [gentoo-user] {OT} Allow work from home?

[lee]

"J. Roeleveld" <joost@××××××××.org> writes:

> On Monday, January 18, 2016 02:02:27 AM lee wrote:
>> "J. Roeleveld" <joost@××××××××.org> writes:
>> > On 17 January 2016 18:35:20 CET, Mick <michaelkintzios@×××××.com> wrote:
>> >
>> > [...]
>> >
>> >>I use the icaclient provided by Citrix to access my virtual desktop at
>> >>work,
>> >>but have never tried to set up something similar at home.  What
>> >>opensource
>> >>software would I need for this?  Is there a wiki somewhere to follow?
>> >>
>> > I'd love to do this myself as well.
>> >
>> > Citrix sells the full package as 'XenDesktop'. To do it yourself you need
>> > a VMserver (Xen or similar) and a remote desktop tool that hooks into the
>> > VM display. (Spice or VNC)
>> >
>> > Then you need some way of authenticating users and providing access to the
>> > client software. [...]
>>
>> You would have a full VM for each user?
>
> Yes
>
>> That would be a huge waste of resources,
>
> Diskspace and CPU can easily be overcommitted.

Overcommitting disk space sounds like a very bad idea.  Overcommitting
memory is not possible with xen.

>> plus having to take care of a lot of VMs,
>
> Automated.

Like how?

>> plus having to buy  a lot of Windoze licenses
>
> Volume licensing takes care of that.

expensive

>> and taking about a week to install the updates
>> after installing a VM.
>
> Never heard of VM templates?

It still takes a week to put the updates onto the template.

>> Add to that that the xen host goes down at
>> random time intervals (because the sending queue of the network card
>> times out for reasons that cannot be determined) which can be as long as
>> a day, a week or even up to three weeks, and you are likely to become a
>> rather unhappy administrator.
>
> Sorry, but I consider that a bug in your hardware. If it's really that
> unstable, replace it.
> I've been running Xen enabled servers for nearly 15 years. Never had issues
> like that. If it were truly that unstable, it wouldn't be gaining popularity.

The hardware has already been replaced, and the problem persists.  Other
machines of identical hardware that don't run xen don't show any issues.

>> Try kvm instead, and you'll find that
>> it's impossible to migrate the VMs from xen to to kvm when you want to
>> use virtio drivers because you can't install them on an existing Windoze
>> VM.
>
> Not a problem with the virtualisation technology. It is an issue with driver
> management inside MS Windows.
> There are ways to migrate VMs succesfully, I just don't see the point in
> wasting time for that.

It's time consuming when you have to reinstall the VMs to migrate them
to kvm.  And when you don't have the installers of all the software
that's on some of the VMs and can't get them, you either have to run
them without virtio drivers or you can't migrate them.

> The biggest reason why I don't use KVM is the lack of full snapshot
> functionality. Snapshotting disks is nice, but you end up with an unclean-
> shutdown situation and anything that's not yet committed to disk is gone.

I'm not sure what you mean.  When you take a snapshot while the VM is not
shut down, what difference does it make whether you use xen or kvm?

>> Then there's the question how well vnc or spice connections work over a
>> VPN that goes over the internet.
>
> VNC works quite well, as long as you use a minimal desktop. (like blackbox).
> Don't expect KDE or Gnome to be usable.
> I haven't tried Spice yet, but I've read that it performs better.

It's not like you had a choice when you have Windoze VMs.

>> It's not like the employees could get
>> reliable internet connections with sufficient bandwidth, not to mention
>> that the company would have to get one in the first place, which isn't
>> much easier to get, if any.
>
> That depends on where you are.

In this country, you have to be really lucky to find a place where you
can get a decent internet connection.

> The company could host the servers in a decent datacentre, which should take
> care of the bandwidth issues.

And give all their data out of hands?  And how much does that cost?

> For the employees, if they want to work from home, it's up to them to ensure
> they have a reliable connection.

It is as much problem of the company when they want the employees to
work at home.  And the employees don't have a choice, they can only get
a connection they can get.

>> It might work in theory.  How would it be feasible in practise?
>
> Plenty of companies do it this way. If you don't want to pay for software like
> XenDesktop, you need to do all the work setting it up yourself.

VNC is somewhat slow over a 1Gbit LAN.  Did they find some way to
overcome this problem?

This sounds like it is for people with unlimited resources.

BTW, access a VM through VNC, and you don't even have any way to make
the mouse pointer in the VNC window actually follow the mouse pointer
you're using, which makes it rather annoying to do anything in the VM
you're looking at.  If you found a solution for that, I'd be curious as
to how you solved this problem.