Topics Map > Instructional Services
CS VM Farm
Overview
This article provides general information about the instructional CS VM Farm. The CS VM Farm is an Engineering IT-managed resource for students in Computer Science courses. The VM Farm provides customizable virtual machines that provide more flexibility than Engineering IT's managed instructional environments. These semesterly student-assigned VMs are created at scale from a VM template based on course staff input.
Note: The VM farm is only architected and staffed for running scalable student-assigned VMs.
VM Farm policies
- VM requests must be submitted 15 business days in advance
- Course staff and students must review the following pages and be familiar with the basics of using Linux:
- VMs will be provisioned in a 'powered off' state. Students will be responsible for powering on their own VMs and can follow the guide at CS VM Farm - Power on or reset VMs. Engineering IT will power off VMs daily at 5 AM.
- Beyond the 'General Specifications' listed below, course staff are responsible for any additional VM configurations and associated troubleshooting
- If the VM becomes unusable as a result of invalid configurations, Engineering IT will reset the VM to its initially-provisioned state.
- VMs do not have scheduled backups. You are responsible for your data! Cloud, Cloud-based storage solutions for campus
- All VM allocations for a course will be removed on the day grades are due
- Students will be given sudo on their assigned VMs
- Due to the risks of having course staff log into student machines where the student has root-level permissions, we provision an administrative VM for course staff only (i.e. sp21-cs100-adm.cs.illinois.edu). The administrative VM allows password-less access to all student machines over ssh from the root account.
- In order to ensure all course staff and students auditing the course have access to their VMs, instructors must follow the guide at: Instructor Tools
- Course staff are responsible for tracking daily roster changes via the 'Instructor Tools' guide linked above and relaying VM changes to Engineering IT. Note that newly registered students will need to wait one day for roster changes to take effect.
- Standard EWS resource policies apply: EWS Labs, EWS Policies
- Due to the volatile nature of the work done on the VM farm, we will do our best to maintain uptime but may need to make resources temporarily unavailable in order to keep the system running. Course staff will be notified regarding these maintenance events.
- VMs are not intended for running course critical services.
General Specifications
- OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9
- Authentication uses Campus LDAP. i.e. NetID and AD password
- VM allocation: Most courses assign one VM per student or group. Other options are available.
- Resource configurations start with 2 vCPU and 4 GB of RAM and can vary based on software used by course
- Students have sudo privileges on their assigned VM
- VMs have configuration management agents
- VM hostnames have the syntax of sp23-cs100-01.cs.illinois.edu
- The VMs are on private campus IP space (with NAT for internet access). VMs will not be accessible from outside campus networks. In order to SSH to a VM, you must be connected through the VPN, CISCO Secure Client or AnyConnect, Installation Instructions Splash Page. For more information, please refer to this page: Networking, Guide to University of Illinois IP Spaces
- List of available software packages
Example of a common setup
| CPUs | 2 vCPU |
| RAM | 4 GB |
| Storage | ~100 GB |
| # of VMs | 1 per student or group - i.e. sp21-cs100-01.cs.illinois.edu |
| Administrative VM for course staff | 1 per course - i.e. sp21-cs100-adm.cs.illinois.edu |
Request VMs
Click here to submit a VM request form for your course.
Short URL for this page: https://go.illinois.edu/csvmfarm