In MAI jobs of students equipped with computers TONK

On August 2 it became known that at the Moscow Aviation Institute (MAI), within transition to electronic education and, as a result, optimization of infrastructure of IT, the project on the equipment of jobs of students in educational audiences by computers TONK was implemented.

Prerequisites

Today, despite the increased requirements imposed to infrastructure of IT of educational institutions in many universities still as jobs of pupils personal computers (so-called "system units") united in a local network are used outdated, both morally, and physically. Similar solutions do not maintain any criticism within requirements of cybersecurity, convenience of work, opportunities of use of repositories with training programs and integration in a modern cloud environment.

In addition, the mentioned "archaic iron" needs permanent personal administration by authorized personnel (carrying out regular planned TO, installation and software updating) of each workstation that inevitably involves increase in operating costs. Remote administration of the PC is impossible for the reasons of requirements of cybersecurity. The park of physical machines also limits possibilities of university on the organization of remote training of students, in particular, of access to the configured educational place.

Project Progress

In MAI, in many respects thanks to an initiative and professionalism of teachers of "Calculus Mathematics and Programming" department of Alexey of Rybalko and Alexander Marasanov and also support of the dean of faculty Sergey Krylov, the modern solution for the organization of jobs of students and teachers was implemented. Based on several servers and a disk system the virtualization cluster on which unrolled infrastructure of VDI was equipped.

Within the project virtual machines of students with a set of special educational software were turned:

• VirtualBox — for the organization of classes in administration/virtualization;
• Images CentOS of 6.8 and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS — for deployment in the mode of the enclosed virtualization and setup under different administration tasks;
• Python 3.5 is the interpreter for writing of scripts of setup on classes in administration/virtualization;
• Continuum Analytics Anaconda 4.3x with Jupyter Notebook is the environment of the organization of packets and a development environment of scripts of setup on classes in administration/virtualization.

For classes in probability theory and mathematical statistics jobs with software are also used:

• MatLab — for carrying out calculations;
• Visual Studio — for writing of the code on C# by calculation of tasks within laboratory works;
• IntelliJ IDEA — for writing of the code on Java by calculation of tasks within laboratory works;
• Microsoft Office 2010 — for documentation of laboratory and term papers and also for holding separate classes in office products of Microsoft (Excel, Access).

Hardware jobs are executed on devices TONK 1000A and TONK of TN1000 with the set client to pilot infrastructure of VMware Horizon 7. Pupils and teachers had the accessibility to educational resources and folders with documents not only from any computer in a class, but also from the mobile devices: from within university using Wi-Fi-network and from the outside — by means of VPN.

Project Results

Virtual work places on the server were configured in MAI in such a way that are created from a template and are issued at the time of connection of the new student. At the same time, due to technologies of hot start and caching, the student does not feel delays. After disconnection of the student from a workplace for the term of more than 20 minutes the workplace automatically is removed. Thanks to such organization became possible to grant to users the expanded rights of Power User and Administrator in workplaces without concerns of damage of a system, and anti-virus control at the same time is required only for network file storages where students save intermediate results of the work. The similar solution also saves university from need to purchase a large number of expensive software licenses, to set it on each workplace. Instead it is possible to use network licenses and to take away them for work in any of classes of university as required.

The high rate of a time between failures (up to 60 thousand hours) thin clients allows, having once created "easy jobs", afterwards to be engaged only in upgrade of servers according to planned development of IT. Therefore, close attention and administration is required by only a server part.

At the same time, thin clients TONK have no forced cooling, they are silent and can directly accommodate behind the monitor using VESA fastening that gives the chance better to organize educational space. Due to low power consumption of thin clients the prize in expenses on the electric power, by estimation, will be 10-fold. Besides, the thin client joins and switched off actually instantly when clicking one button. Thus, at the end of occupation students do not need to spend precious seconds of a break for waiting of switching off of a system.

Besides, pupils got access to educational resources and the documents from mobile devices and home computers that allowed to refuse completely use of physical media of information — flash cards.