Connecting to VMs on an isolated network

[IRWilliams]

Hi All

Firstly I am new to virtualization and to servers in general.

I recently started working for a college as a support technician for the computing department. They have bought a Dell PowerEdge T620 which is running ESXi 5.0 for use as a lab environment. I've been tasked with setting up a class set of 20 VMs attached to an isolated network which the students can access and use to perform networking assignments.

I have managed to create the VMs (WIN7 Pro,1.5GB ram,20GB hdd) and connected them to a vSwitch that has no NIC attached but am now running into problems when the students try to access these machines.

Currently we are trying to use vSphere client, each student is given a login in a group with no access to the host but assigned admin rights to 1 VM each. Upon login they can see only the VM they have admin rights to and cannot make any changes to the host or the VM's settings.

The problems start when they try to access the VMs at the same time. They can eventually all logon to the host and start their machines but only 10-12 can see their VMs in the console, either the tab or popout console. The remainder's consoles remain black. What are we doing wrong?

Are their limits to the number of simultaneous console connections through vSphere client?

Is there a better way for the students to access their VMs? We don't want the VMs to have any connection to the college network or the internet at this time.

Any help will be gratefully received.

[IRWilliams]

Any ideas anyone?

[memaad]

Hi,

When VM console is black, does it give any specific message

You can try instruction from this KB http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=201540...

Regards

Mohammed

[firestartah]

Hi

Well it wont be concurrent connections as that's around 40 if memory serves me right. Is there a reason you don't have vCenter installed? As through this way you would be able to have loads more connections and the vmrc (showing the console) shouldn't show up as blackened. Aslo this would mean the virtual machines are still isloated but access in works fine.

Unfortunately there isn't a simpler way that i can think of as I would say do a internal private cloud but that is going to be more setup before making it easier to give students access whilst isolating them but if this is something you will need to do often and many times over then using vCloud would really save you time and effort for a realtively simple setup (consultants hat on for this)

Gregg

[IRWilliams]

Thank you for your replies

Mohammed, the consoles give no message at all. I did check out the link you provided and have delimited the number of console connections on the VMs but they were limited to 10 anyway so don't think this would have been the problem.

Gregg, thanks for the heads up on vCenter server. We do have it installed in the appliance although I hadn't used the web client previously. I've now got the web remote client working although I am waiting for our Network team to add it to the student machines as I do not have admin rights on any of the college computers. I am then hoping to use internet shortcuts to the VMs eliminating a step in the login process.

Today is the last day of term so I wont be able to test any of this until the new year. I will let you know how I get on.

Happy holidays to both of you,

Ian