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JCTeacher
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VMAP Eliminates ESXi and VCenter Lab Installs, Thanks to Greedy Pirates.

I run a class in Virtualization Technologies. My college acquired a VMAP subscription primarily to use to set up our training lab.

We run 18 Dell T110 servers with 16GB of memory.

We also run 18 Dell desktops with 8 GB of memory.

Here is how I (used to) run the 16 week class:

Each student would:

  1. Install a 180 day eval version of Windows 2008 R2 on a bare desktop.
  2. Install Workstation 8 on the desktop. Introduce students to the concepts of virtual machines. Workstation is great for this.
  3. Bring their own 16GB USB drive to class and install ESXi 5.0 on it running on the server.
  4. Install VCenter Server (and client) directly on the desktop.
  5. Create an additional two virtual ESXi host VMs
  6. Create another VM from VCenter Server virtual appliance.
  7. Start creating VMs, Clusters, ect.

The point is, each student will be learning a wide range of features offered in VSphere. Each student needs TWO VCenter Server licenses and at least THREE ESXi licenses.

At the end of the class, the lab is torn down (all software uninstalled).

The VMAP subscription that my college purchased recently announced that lab Install licenses are no longer offered for the VCenter or ESXi products.

I can now only use the 60 day version?

There is no way around this?

I could create 50 or so "student users" and get individual keys for each. I would then have to use each key individually on all of the hosts installed in the lab.

The students enrolling in this class were very happy to try out the VSphere environment, something they could not do at home.

Why not just offer lab install keys that have a 1 year life. That woul be more than long enough for any semester length class.

Or does VMware just want to shut down the "non academic partner" classes being offered. The "certified" classes use the same VMAP account from Kivuto however. How are they going to run their labs?

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9muir
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Other classes along these lines have found that the best way to run the class is to a) have the students work in pairs or larger teams, so that they can pool their licenses; and b) have them download the license keys themselves, as you suggested. They don't necessarily need three license keys for ESXi each though, since each license key has an associated CPU count (either 2 or 4, depending upon the product) that can be used to activate multiple host CPUs. Note that we recently made vCloud Suite available to students in addition to vSphere, which in the past was only available to faculty and staff, so there are various options for which products the students use in the class.

Happy to discuss further with you to help make your class a success.

Steve Muir

--

Director, VMware Academic Program (VMAP)
http://labs.vmware.com/academic
VMware Technical Journal Vol 1, No. 2 out now -- http://vmware.com/go/vmtj

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JCTeacher
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I know this is a hard question to answer.

But really, how are the VCP classes going to operate if they can only use the 60 day versions?

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scott28tt
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I don't have any personal involvement with VMAP, but have asked about this internally.


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admin
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Correct, VMAP has decided to eliminate Lab installs because there were some schools that were abusing the program. The VMAP team will still happily support the use case you describe. It may require some changes- each student can be recognized within Kivuto's system and they can go through the process of downloading (or just acquiring the keys) to all the components of your class. You can email me directly if you have questions- tvalentine@vmware.com

9muir
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Other classes along these lines have found that the best way to run the class is to a) have the students work in pairs or larger teams, so that they can pool their licenses; and b) have them download the license keys themselves, as you suggested. They don't necessarily need three license keys for ESXi each though, since each license key has an associated CPU count (either 2 or 4, depending upon the product) that can be used to activate multiple host CPUs. Note that we recently made vCloud Suite available to students in addition to vSphere, which in the past was only available to faculty and staff, so there are various options for which products the students use in the class.

Happy to discuss further with you to help make your class a success.

Steve Muir

--

Director, VMware Academic Program (VMAP)
http://labs.vmware.com/academic
VMware Technical Journal Vol 1, No. 2 out now -- http://vmware.com/go/vmtj

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JCTeacher
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With my small class size. (18 students, 18-Desktop/Server "Stations") I can use the regular VMAP subscription licenses and set up my lab. At the end of the semester. These licenses are still "In use" and cannot be used again for anthing but legitimate "lab training" installs.

I am sad, but I can imagine some "schools" misusing the licenses. If I did it at my college, I would soon be updating my resume and looking for employment. Thanks for the reply.

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JCTeacher
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Thanks for the help. I will run the class one way or another. Students are lining up to take it.

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