Lab FAQ: Access to virtual machine / Virtual lab
There are two ways to enter our virtual machine, Depending on the use that is going to give her. If you are a student/teacher access to the console and/or reinstallation of the virtual machine itself, you have access to the virtualization system, otherwise, you only have access via SSH and open ports previously requested depending on the type of laboratory practice. Students/teachers who have access to the virtualization system, They also have in turn access through SSH/specific ports to your virtual machine.
Access to system virtualization:
https://matrix.inf.uva.es
A window will appear as the following, which will have to fill with our username/password details. Both students and professors of the school of computer engineering, they must be selected in “Domain” the LAB option. Teachers who do not have account in the laboratories of the school, they must choose the option “PVE”. Once this step, We will already be within the virtualization system.
Once inside, We can see the availability of the cluster, and we will have to look between our different servers / machine. Another option, is from the list on the right, Double click to the virtual machine and now go into your options.
Once selected the virtual machine, We can start it, stop it, turn it off, reseted, Open the console and enter an ISO image on CD-ROM drive virtual.
In the top right of the page, We have the following options:
- Home: Starts the virtual machine (If not it is already).
- Orderly closure: It gives us several options. Locking computer, Turn off and Reset. By default the action of this button is an orderly, switch off the machine and will if you have correctly installed ACPI support.
- Migration: This option only is available for system administrators.
- Console: Opens a new window with the virtual machine console KVM, from which you can perform an installation or any needs requiring a presence in front of the machine.
SSH access to the virtual machine:
All virtual machines in the laboratories have by default the SSH port open, following a pattern that is explained below. It is possible that machines have more open ports, but in that case, the teacher in charge of the virtual laboratory, will show students those ports.
The port to access our virtual machine is formed in the following way:
For example, We have awarded the machine with ID 4501, the port would be:
virtual.lab.inf.UVA.es –> 4501L
virtual.lab.inf.UVA.es –> 45011
Where L is a number of 1 to 9 services which may be of each virtual machine. By default, L = 1 is the SSH port.
Virtual laboratories network topology:
Although each student is assigned a hostname of different machine to gain access to your virtual machine, the truth is that in reality all the virtual machines from the Internet respond to the same IP (virtual.lab.inf.UVA.es), It is a server that does NAT to reach the VPN virtual machines. This is not necessarily so from inside the virtual machine, that being in the private network, they need to necessarily have a hostname and IP address different. In this way, we gain in security, avoiding wasting public IPs and the student to remember the ID of your virtual machine to know that SSH port has to access, According to the explanation above.
A graph of the network topology scheme would be as follows: