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Virtualisation

For those buying servers, we strongly recommend you consider virtualisation when provisioning new services. It saves on the proliferation of hardware, so is environmentally friendly. Depending on application our desktops can support a number of virtual hosts without any significant overhead. Each could be running services that traditionally would have been run on dedicated physical hardware. Running a virtual service on your own DICE desktop can also help to get a service going without buying new hardware.

On DICE desktop computers, we currently only support VirtualBox on DICE for staff and research postgraduates wishing to run their own virtual hosts. Some teaching courses also use a shared VirtualBox image for students to use on DICE desktops in the student labs, in particular where the requirements of the course are not easy to deploy natively on DICE desktops.

For those requiring a DICE-like environment on their own laptops or home desktops, we provide Virtual DICE, a DICE environment in a virtual machine.

We use KVM for running our own virtual services, which is under testing for the wider user population and only available on request. We can provide a KVM service for DICE research servers, so as to provide a fully-managed host with mixed management of guests.

We also provide commodity KVM guests for running certain public-facing services. Again, contact us for details.

IS provides a charged virtual hosting service (IS) as a managed platform for hosting Windows, Linux and Unix services on a highly resilient virtualisation platform based on VMware.

Last reviewed: 
14/07/2021

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