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I went to a training session where I was learning to use some software. The course was administered through the use of virtual machines. The instructor had a laptop that was running some sort of virtual machine server whereby he would create a virtual machine for each student in the course and through the use of a wireless router, he had us use our own laptops as a thin client to do a remote desktop into the virtual machine session.

In my line of work, we also do many training sessions. The main difference is that we use software in combination with some hardware on the local network. Right now, each student has a laptop, two industrial electronic devices attached to the network, and a switch to facilitate these connections. All of this is provided by us.

The headache is that I have to restore each laptop to a previous state after each training session is complete. Also, if we want more students in a class, we would need to purchase more laptops.

So my question is, is it possible to push this architecture into a virtual machine similar to the instance I described in the beginning of my question? I need to keep the networks for each student isolated from each other (edit).

I have tried doing research on the internet but my experience with virtual machines has been just as a user and I am not clear about the possible network architectures possible with a virtual machines.

Edit:

So apparently I can't include images in my question unless I have at least ten reputation points, so I made a link to it instead. It is a diagram to help illustrate the problem better.

jaromey
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    I'm not completely understanding your question. Are you asking if you can implement and deploy a virtual infrastructure for your students? If so, the answer is yes. This question is too broad in the sense that there are a number of ways to accomplish this and your specific needs will dictate the type of solution. As it stands, your question is a bit vague and related in very general terms. – joeqwerty Mar 24 '15 at 20:39
  • Yeah, I know I can implement and deploy a virtual infrastructure for the students. My concern was with integrating this virtual infrastructure with the physical hardware. Furthermore, that the hardware wants to use a very specific ip address but if I had multiple students connecting the same hardware on the network this would be an issue. I still don't think I am being clear enough, so I am going to create a diagram once I get home. – jaromey Mar 24 '15 at 21:05

1 Answers1

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If communication between student's PC and your hardware device is IP-based, I don't see any problem with virtual machines vs physical guests. If, on the other hand, you use some serial/parallel connections, this can cause some headache (but nothing insurmountable).

EDIT:

If you need to emulate totally separate LANs, you can use VLANs for that. This require a VLAN-capable switch and to correctly tag your virtual machine traffic, which can be done both at VM-level or at HyperVisor level (at least with Linux/KVM). If you go down this route, I strongly suggest you to study something on VLANs.

If, for some reason, a VLAN capable switch is out of question, than you can load your HyperVisor with multiple network interface and use a single network interface + switch for each VM. This is clearly a much less desirable solution, so I really suggest you to go the VLAN route.

shodanshok
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  • I was thinking the problem would be that the hardware must use a specific ip address, otherwise it will not function. With multiple students using the same hardware that uses the same ip address and subnet mask, I imagine that this would be a problem. I understand that you can create a virtual switch but how do I then connect the hardware to these virtual switches. – jaromey Mar 24 '15 at 21:01
  • If you are using multiple physical PC connected to a switch with, in turn, connect to your proprietary hardware, you can do that with virtual machines also. It is not a virtual switch problem - simply put, the virtual machine network interface will be bridged with your physical interface but each VM will have different IP addresses. If your hardware device do not supports multiple concurrent connection it is another problem, one that you have with physical laptops also. – shodanshok Mar 24 '15 at 21:09
  • Each student has their own set of the proprietary hardware but the networks must be isolated from each other. I have added a diagram for added clarity. – jaromey Mar 25 '15 at 01:59
  • The best option is to use a switch supporting VLAN segmentation and bind each VM to a specific VLAN. How to do that depends on the virtualization platform of choice and the level of separation that you want to enforce. For a simple setup, I think that configuring VLAN tag directly inside each VM should be ok, but your mileage may vary. – shodanshok Mar 25 '15 at 07:17
  • Each VM must use the ip address 10.4.0.6 with the subnet mask 255.254.0.0, otherwise the proprietary hardware will not communicate with it. Is VLAN segmentation different from having multiple subnets (probably a silly question on this stack exchange site)? If so, then you can modify this as your posted answer. But one additional question: Would this mean that I would need a separate physical network adapter on my server for each VM? Oh, and thank you for being patient with me. – jaromey Mar 25 '15 at 14:09
  • I've edited my reply with added clarification on your last question also. – shodanshok Mar 25 '15 at 17:00