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CEN - Center for Earth System Research and Sustainability
Centerfor Earth System Research and Sustainability (CEN)

Photo: UHH/CEN/ T. Wasilewski

IT-Service: CEN-IT

Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

VDI-Solution

Manual (german only)


The VDI (Virtual Desktop Infrastructure) consists of a VMWare Horizon Desktop virtualisation on 5 servers with a total of 1280 GB RAM and 140 CPU cores, that are operated in cooperation with the RRZ. As terminals 21,5'' All-In-On (AIO)-devices and ThinClients with 24'' monitor are used.

You can login with your u-account at thin clients and all-in-one-clients in seminar rooms 1536a/c, 1335 (Geomatikum) and 6 (Grindelberg). Afterwards you can choose in the left-hand menu from a Linux pool (CentOS 7 Linux) and a Windows pool.

  • The Linux desktops are not equivalent to the standard installation of CEN-IT Debian. Due to technical reasons we had to switch to another distribution. However, the software tree is available to the usual extent.
  • The Windows desktops are based on Windows Terminal Services and extensive software packages.

Some useful notes:

  • In order to use a projector in the seminar rooms, first the projector has to be switched on, afterwards the thin client can be started.
  • If you lock your thin client (left-hand menu - Shutdown Terminal - Lock Terminal) your Windows/Linux sessions are still active. You can connect to your session later from this or any other thin client.
  • Your profile should not be too large to keep the start and leaving of Windows fast enough. If you use Thunderbird, please switch of the offline cache (see image).
  • You are free to use Linux and Windows session any time you like, as separate sessions or simultaneously.

At any time there are at least 50 desktops running in each pool. When users are logging in, new desktops are created in the background as soon as only 20 free desktops are left. That should prevent the case that new machines are created at login only, causing long waiting times. That should prevent long waiting times caused by new machines created just in time.

If you are missing a software package or the virtual hardware is not sufficient for you, please contact us and we will try to adjust the default pool or create a special pool.