
Hi, I'm starting to look at oVirt to help with a datacentre consolidation project to drastically reduce the number of physical servers and it seems like a great fit. As an added bonus, it looks like it might help solve some desktop management challenges we have. Since the desktop PCs are reasonably powerful, what I would ideally like is for them to be nodes, each capable of running a single templated VM accessed by the local user. I can only seem to find documentation relating to standard VDI, i.e thin clients and fat servers. As I'm trying to reduce the number of servers, this is not ideal. Does anyone know of a similar setup or can provide some pointers? Thanks

On Wed, 2018-10-31 at 22:17 +0000, gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm starting to look at oVirt to help with a datacentre consolidation project to drastically reduce the number of physical servers and it seems like a great fit.
As an added bonus, it looks like it might help solve some desktop management challenges we have. Since the desktop PCs are reasonably powerful, what I would ideally like is for them to be nodes, each capable of running a single templated VM accessed by the local user.
I can only seem to find documentation relating to standard VDI, i.e thin clients and fat servers. As I'm trying to reduce the number of servers, this is not ideal.
Does anyone know of a similar setup or can provide some pointers?
Thanks _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/communit y-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/ message/OXPT73W2MFBJN3FSOJH425AR62467L2L/
What about just using something like SpaceWalk for management and FreeIPA for user management? You're not supposed to use a oVirt node as a workstation IIRC. /tony -- Tony Albers Systems Architect Systems Director, National Cultural Heritage Cluster Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Tel: +45 2566 2383 / +45 8946 2316

FreeIPA would be ideal for user management if don't already have an alternative. You could have a minimal install and use KVM/libvirt for the local VMs Gnome Boxes could be the interface for VMs https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-win10-in-gnome-boxes https://fedoramagazine.org/download-os-gnome-boxes/ You could use katello/foreman ManageIQ to provision the baremetal machines as well the libvirt provider. You could sell/donate the desktop PCs and replace them servers/thin clients. Regards, Paul S. ________________________________________ From: Tony Brian Albers <tba@kb.dk> Sent: 01 November 2018 05:45 To: gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com; users@ovirt.org Subject: [ovirt-users] Re: Desktops as Nodes and Client? On Wed, 2018-10-31 at 22:17 +0000, gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm starting to look at oVirt to help with a datacentre consolidation project to drastically reduce the number of physical servers and it seems like a great fit.
As an added bonus, it looks like it might help solve some desktop management challenges we have. Since the desktop PCs are reasonably powerful, what I would ideally like is for them to be nodes, each capable of running a single templated VM accessed by the local user.
I can only seem to find documentation relating to standard VDI, i.e thin clients and fat servers. As I'm trying to reduce the number of servers, this is not ideal.
Does anyone know of a similar setup or can provide some pointers?
Thanks _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/communit y-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/ message/OXPT73W2MFBJN3FSOJH425AR62467L2L/
What about just using something like SpaceWalk for management and FreeIPA for user management? You're not supposed to use a oVirt node as a workstation IIRC. /tony -- Tony Albers Systems Architect Systems Director, National Cultural Heritage Cluster Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Tel: +45 2566 2383 / +45 8946 2316 _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/community-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/message/347VHMGP3PEHEY... To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to:- http://disclaimer.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/disclaimer/disclaimer.html

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them. I am looking for a user management solution, but we also use mostly windows desktops and Office365, so will probably end up with some solution based on Azure AD. For context, one other reason for wanting the desktops to be nodes is that the base OS could be oVirt node. Our DR site provider charges a lot if we need to update the OS image of desktops, so using VMs could be a way to allow us to keep things up to date without incurring the costs. Thanks again, Drew On Fri, 2 Nov 2018, 16:39 Staniforth, Paul <P.Staniforth@leedsbeckett.ac.uk wrote:
FreeIPA would be ideal for user management if don't already have an alternative. You could have a minimal install and use KVM/libvirt for the local VMs
Gnome Boxes could be the interface for VMs https://www.ctrl.blog/entry/how-to-win10-in-gnome-boxes https://fedoramagazine.org/download-os-gnome-boxes/
You could use katello/foreman ManageIQ to provision the baremetal machines as well the libvirt provider.
You could sell/donate the desktop PCs and replace them servers/thin clients.
Regards, Paul S. ________________________________________ From: Tony Brian Albers <tba@kb.dk> Sent: 01 November 2018 05:45 To: gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com; users@ovirt.org Subject: [ovirt-users] Re: Desktops as Nodes and Client?
On Wed, 2018-10-31 at 22:17 +0000, gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com wrote:
Hi,
I'm starting to look at oVirt to help with a datacentre consolidation project to drastically reduce the number of physical servers and it seems like a great fit.
As an added bonus, it looks like it might help solve some desktop management challenges we have. Since the desktop PCs are reasonably powerful, what I would ideally like is for them to be nodes, each capable of running a single templated VM accessed by the local user.
I can only seem to find documentation relating to standard VDI, i.e thin clients and fat servers. As I'm trying to reduce the number of servers, this is not ideal.
Does anyone know of a similar setup or can provide some pointers?
Thanks _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/communit y-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/ message/OXPT73W2MFBJN3FSOJH425AR62467L2L/
What about just using something like SpaceWalk for management and FreeIPA for user management?
You're not supposed to use a oVirt node as a workstation IIRC.
/tony
-- Tony Albers Systems Architect Systems Director, National Cultural Heritage Cluster Royal Danish Library, Victor Albecks Vej 1, 8000 Aarhus C, Denmark. Tel: +45 2566 2383 / +45 8946 2316 _______________________________________________ Users mailing list -- users@ovirt.org To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@ovirt.org Privacy Statement: https://www.ovirt.org/site/privacy-policy/ oVirt Code of Conduct: https://www.ovirt.org/community/about/community-guidelines/ List Archives: https://lists.ovirt.org/archives/list/users@ovirt.org/message/347VHMGP3PEHEY... To view the terms under which this email is distributed, please go to:- http://disclaimer.leedsbeckett.ac.uk/disclaimer/disclaimer.html

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll look into them. I am looking for a user management solution, but we also use mostly windows desktops (also centos and macos) and Office365, so will probably end up with some solution based on Azure AD. For extra context, one other reason for wanting the desktops to be nodes is that the base OS could be oVirt node. Our DR site provider charges a lot if we need to update the OS image of desktops, so using VMs could be a way to allow us to keep things up to date and in sync to the DR site without incurring the costs. Thanks again, Drew
participants (5)
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Drew Gilbert
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Drew Gilbert
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gilbert.drew+ovirt@gmail.com
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Staniforth, Paul
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Tony Brian Albers