Thread: help designing vm server for school

Hi I am a first semester student but was asked to do the work study program and i am tasked with doing a project that will allow me to run about 15 Debian or Ubuntu vm's from one server and one public ip. Also it is only in the schools DMZ and isolated from their production network. A little background is needed here. In my Unix class we all ssh into one Unix server to do our work but for obvious reasons we have limited permissions. This setup is not condusive to some of the class work needed to be done. since the class is on administering a Unix system not having root permission is a problem. The dept head asked me to create a solution and that's all I'm given. I have some ideas but would love to hear solutions from more experienced ppl and professionals. Here is the restrictions and needs. Isolated from network using only one public IP running 15 machines around the clock that have remote access via ssh for the student who "owns" each machine. I never used xen and only used vbox on a client before. On vbox I would use NAT adapter and port forward ssh to each machine via vbox routing by giving each machine a unique unused port number for ssh. Is this feasible? If so can xen do this alone without using vbox? I see the tutorial for begginers guide to xen on their site but It doesn't cover my networking needs and questions as it uses bridged adapter as well as one machine with a GUI and vnc. With xen running 15 machines can I use one pubic IP to remote access each machine by using port forwarding on unused ports for ssh remember the schools default gateway will not handle this as a restriction and xen or something on the one server I got has to handle the routing for the vm's. If so any one have any tutorials or good info for me. If I'm way off tell me that as well. I would also like these machines to be able to access internet for apt-get individually as well and I don't know if that's possible. By the way no GUI will be on the vm's or server and no windows os either so plz no tools that are GUI or windows in your advice. Again I get I public IP and one server that the IT ppl will just attach to the DMZ. I get nothing else because IT is seperate from the CPU science dept and we can't tell them what to allow or not allow so this needs to not effect their network at all yet be each must be accessible remotely under one IP via ssh as well as internet access for each machine. The hardware is taken care of so that won't be an issue and I was going to use Ubuntu 12.04 but thinking Debian now since xen's site has more info using Debian as examples. By the way ec2 or a dedicated internet connection are out because of budgets and proposals etc.. that is why I was asked to do this in a way that is under the radar without IT support and cooperation other than plugging this into the DMZ for me. I can't even go into the server room. It's an odd situation.