Proxmox

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Proxmox VE is a complete, open-source server management platform for enterprise virtualization. It tightly integrates the KVM hypervisor and Linux Containers (LXC), software-defined storage and networking functionality, on a single platform. With the integrated web-based user interface you can manage VMs and containers, high availability for clusters, or the integrated disaster recovery tools with ease.

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Classroom with thinclients and proxmox-backed VMs - What are my options? (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) by poinck@lemmy.world to c/proxmox@lemmy.world

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I have a room with 30 thinclients currently running Windows with the possibility to open RDP sessions.

The current setup using VMWare is slow even for 2D content. That is why I want to replace it with Proxmox. What can I expect? I suspect the current setup is using SAN, I want to go ZFS on local drives.

I experimented in a homelab on KVM to see how fast the VMs can become. With 8 cores Google Earth becomes somewhat usable over RDP. But imagine 30 students using it on the same VM. The VM is Debian 13 btw.

I also experiemented with spice and 3D acceleration, but it works only locally and does not support multiple logins. What other options do I have. Even when I setup the VM to use virgl it uses software rendering over RDP. I thought of replacing the Windows on the thinclients with Linux, but then I would need individual VMs for every student and a secure spice session. Is that even possible? I would need a potent GPU in the server, maybe more than one. Is a 64 core CPU and 512 GB RAM enough for 30 students?

I've read that proxmox uses temporary .vv files for noVNC in the browser. I hope this can be setup permanently to be accessible over the network.

Any advice or new ideas are welcome!

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[–] lurch@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (2 children)

bro, did you know that X11 is network transparent for exactly that scenario. the Xclients (running on a central server) can connect to a remote Xserver on the thin client. Xpra can deal with unstable connections. XDMCP can handle multi user environments. It was like magic back in the day. You could have a GUI app running on your workstation in the office displayed in your living room.

AFAIK they have something like that in wayland, too. not sure how complete it is. didn't try it yet.

[–] poinck@lemmy.world 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I used ssh -X many times in the past. The setup you are describing sounds fascinating. The only thing I dont know how to allow the students to connect to a different VM the same way. Not evey seminar will be on the same server/VM.

And yes, it seems I was asking for Linux terminal server with GUI login. That would eliminate the possibility to run Windows apps that cannot be emulated.

[–] KaninchenSpeed@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 points 2 days ago

I'm currently running gnomes rdp server as a terminal server in a test VM. The rdp performance is so much better than x11 or wayland (with waypipe) forwarding for anything 3d.

Also you get gnomes login screen so you can do active directory/ldap login.

Changing servers is as simple as changing the server ip on the client.

Or if you want to move whole classes/users without user interaction, you can create a dns subdomain for that class/user which points to the correct server for that class/user, which you can change, of cause this only works if each class/user is only using one terminal server at a time.