Low Cost Computing Using Virtualization for Remote Desktop

Objective: The Objective is to makes use of open source tools like LTSP and XENto make the solution affordable to everybody. Abstract: The goal of this project is to provide a low cost open source Remote Desktop based computing environment to users by using Virtualization Technology and existing open source software and tools. In this project, we have used LTSP (Linux Terminal Server Project) to access Remote Desktop and Xen hypervisor to provide virtual desktop environment at server. A user gets a personalized desktop in the form of a VM (Virtual Machine) running over remote server. It is different from the old Remote Desktop solutions in a way that instead of a login session on single OS remote server, user will get a full-fledged desktop with desired OS. The most important benefit for the system will be the resource conservation as facilities like live VM migration available with virtualization will help in Load Consolidation and Load Balancing. Because of virtualization, users desktop is also isolated from other users in the same physical machine. This project makes use of open source tools like LTSP and XEN to make the solution affordable to everybody. There are certain similar solutions available in market like Citrix XenDesktop ,VM Ware View [but because of their proprietary nature they are both costly and closed systems.

Existing system: The desktops/laptops used by the users nowadays have a powerful hardware which may be over-kill for an average user. The complexity of software and their demand of computing power is an ever increasing phenomenon. This, coupled with improvements in processor chip making, has resulted in a very rapid increase in the computational power/capacity of the hardware.

Disadvantages: These powerful machines become obsolete very soon and hence are required to be replaced with more powerful machines. The major reason behind this is not the lack of processing capacity of the hardware but the service support and compatibility with newer Operating Systems and software. This results in unnecessary wastage of resources and in turn increases the cost required for the operation of an enterprise.

Proposed system: Sharing of the operating system instance among multiple users: One user can cause others to suffer. For example, a misbehaving application can consume most of the resources of the system. Imbalance in loads of different remote servers: There are no load

balancing/consolidation schemes available in such solutions. Users only get a session on the remote server rather thana personalized Desktop.

Advantages: Users can access their desktop from any thin client in the local network. Users no longer work on a powerful, much-morethan- required hardware but share a remote powerful machine using light weight thin clients Extensive saving in cost and time required for maintenance/upgrades as only the server is required to be upgraded or replaced.

Block Diagram:

Internet

Virtual M

Virtual M

Proxy Server

Management Server

Client

Client

Software Requirements: Language Front End Hardware Requirements: Processor Hard disc RAM : : : >2GHZ 40 GB 1GB : : JAVA J2ME

Java and GPRS supported mobile phone.