[committee] VMs for members

[matches at ucc.gu.uwa.edu.au]

Hi,

People were discussing the magical cloud a lot last Thursday or Friday  
on #ucc, and at some point VMs for members were discussed. So I added  
it to the agenda, but an email to committee@ is probably more  
productive.

Thoughts of myself and/or other people:

1. Why should we make VMs more accessible to members?
    - Access to VMs encourages members to pursue the noble art of  
breaking things without being put on wheel first.
    - This may or may not result in the advancement of computer  
science (our stated goal as a club).

2. Why shouldn't we make VMs more accessible to members?
    - Computers are relatively cheap, people could easily buy a  
physical machine and break that instead.
    - A cheap physical machine will probably be faster than any specs  
we could reasonably put on VMs.
    - It may require more work than the benefits merit.
    - People already have access to VMs. They should read minds better.

3. What do we need to do to make VMs more accessible to members?
    - Physical servers. This depends on how many people want to use  
VMs obviously.
    - Make sure VMs are secure, so that no one can break the rest of  
ucc with their VM. This probably just means not unfirewalling their VMs?
    - A screening process to choose who can have a VM (an arcane  
ritual or painful trial by fire)
    - A script to automate making VMs (easy) and a way of keeping track of VMs
    - Some sort of policy/legal thing?

Since we will have a new committee in 2 months or so, the current  
committee should probably only make recommendations.

Apologies for the verbose email, but it will save me from having to  
remember all this in the committee meeting.

Sam Moore
[SZM]
OCM 2011

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"A chicken in every pot and a car in every garage" ? Herbert Hoover
"A cloud on every server and a VM for every member" - UCC 2012  
committee slogan?