Using Virtual Machines in System Administration Education (original) (raw)

System and network administration education faces a significant challenge supplying students with both theory and hands-on practical experience. Students need real systems with root access in order to install and test popular services as a basis for learning key issues through experience. We present how networks of virtual machines can be used in education to provide the necessary environments for students to work on and expect to see cost savings, more challenging student assignments, a protected test environment for every student or group and better scalability for larger classes and most importantly, the ability to reconfigure and restore networks rapidly. This paper also presents a tool for the building and administration of virtual networks based on User-mode Linux[1]. This effort is a joint venture between lecturers from the University College of Oslo, University of Amsterdam, University of Linköping and other experienced lecturers in the field of system and network administra...