Virtual Computing Lab

The Virtual Computing Lab is a resource born out of the Curation and Management of Digital Assets Certificate (CMDA) program with the Digital Curation Innovation Center (DCIC), that has since evolved into a cloud based classroom lab resource for faculty and students of the iSchool.

The VCL allows students and faculty to create Windows/Ubuntu instances using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Working in the VCL “Amazon” cloud, allows for abstracting the complicated instance configuration process on Amazon EC2 and provides a simple interface to create OS environments (instances) via a Django Web App[1].

The VCL proves to be an effective tool in learning since software images can be curated according to professors’ needs with software pre-installed to their requirements. Since the images are run on the cloud Amazon infrastructure this provides another flexible hosted option.

VCL features:

1. Instructors may share control of student machines for problem-solving
2. Cloud monitoring – optimizing machine usage
3. Student desktop sharing – for group studies
4. Cloud-based shared data sets

The code for the VCL Webapp can be found at Github

MAKE SURE ALL DRUPAL SERVERS IMPLEMENT CAS AUTHENTICATION.