Virtual Insanity: Two Approaches to Virtual Computer Labs During COVID-19

This session was previously recorded live in Philadelphia.

The pandemic made us all innovators, but our existing infrastructure and technology tools played a big part in the trajectory of that innovation. When students were sent home and universities went into lockdown in the spring of 2020, strategies for virtualizing resources for teaching, learning, and research kicked into high gear. Indiana University had a well-established virtual environment but needed to find ways to resource it at a vastly different scale. The University of Notre Dame had a nascent VDI program that had to expand rapidly to meet the demand.

Notre Dame went “cloud-first” several years ago. Indiana University has transitioned from fully on-prem to various forms of hybrid over the past few years. These different starting points have led to differing implementations of virtualized resources, and, naturally, there are advantages and disadvantages inherent in both approaches. This presentation will provide an opportunity to compare and contrast the approaches and how they point the way to the future of equitable computing for all.

·         Hear the dramatic stories of those first few hectic weeks in March 2020 when IT departments were the superheroes.

·         Enjoy the tales of rapid resilience and cross-divisional teamwork.

·         Thrill to the system architecture diagrams comparing fully cloud-based with hybrid implementations.

·         Gasp at the cost comparisons. Experience the performance of different systems.

·         Gaze in wonder at what the future of academic computing could be.