Crash And Burn Virtual Lab

What is the Crash and Burn Virtual Lab?

The Crash and Burn lab is a virtual environment in the CSL's VMware Cloud where you can “check out” virtual machines for instructional purposes. Formally a physical room with 10 computers and disks you can check out, the new environment allows for a much wider range of uses and experimentation.

Using the Virtual Lab

[TODO] Do not worry--this will be covered in the email you receive from the CSL when your virtual machine is ready.

How Long Can I Use A Crash VM?

VMs will be checked out on a per semester basis. At the end of this semester, you will be sent an email notifying you that your VM will be deleted. You can, if needed, request a renewal subject to labstaff approval.

How Do I Get Access To The Crash And Burn Virtual Lab?

In order to get access to the Crash and Burn Lab, please visit the Crash and Burn Lab Forms. Follow the directions to request a VM.

You will be assigned a VM when you fill out the web form. You will receive email shortly with important instructions on how to access and use your VM.

Please be understanding of any delays that may be encountered with requesting a VM as this is the first semester for this virtual lab and there may be still some kinks to work out.

Can I Check Out Multiple VMs at a Time?

Yes. However, this can only be done in times of low demand. We have a limited number of resources available to dedicate to the Crash and Burn Lab, so at this time we can only check out a maximum for 40 VMs at a time. Please exercise discretion and understand that there are situations in which we cannot give users multiple VMs.

What Hardware Is In These VMs

The Crash & Burn computers are hosted on one of three VMware ESX 5 hosts clustered together. Each VM will be given the following resources:

You should be able to install most Linux and Windows distributions out of the box and have it work without any additional drivers.

Note: The logical names for the disk, mouse, video, and network are OS dependent. Please refer to the OS documentation for this information.

What Are The Network Configuration Parameters?

The IP address and hostname are in the email sent to you when you request a VM. For reference, the disks IP addresses begin at 128.105.100.123 on crash-01.cs.wisc.edu and continue sequentially to 128.105.100.162 with crash-40.cs.wisc.edu.

The network parameters are:

The crash and burn lab is on the unsup network which also uses a proxy: configure your WWW and anonymous FTP proxies to squid.cs.wisc.edu port 3128.

How Is The Network Access Restricted?

For security reasons, access is restricted as follows:

* Access is restricted to hosts on the CS Dept. Network (128.105.0.0/16) * Access to the following ports is blocked:

See Also:

• UnsupportedNetworkFAQs