Title: Automated creation of a custom VCL cloud infrastructure

Authors: Larry Burton; Karen Burton; Ann Porter; Gerald Whitaker; Hudson DeFoe

Addresses: Information Technology Department, Greensboro College, Greensboro, 27401-1875 NC, USA ' Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of NC at Greensboro, Greensboro, NC, USA ' Business Engineering and Technical Studies, Davidson County CC, Lexington, NC, USA ' Base Realignment Support, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA ' Dean Engineering School, Morgan State University, Baltimore, MD, USA

Abstract: This paper describes an inter-institutional, collaborative project to automate the entire process of creating a robust enterprise network with an integrated VCL cloud. The audience is individuals seeking to establish a VCL site in environments having little or no enterprise IT infrastructure. The starting point is one or more computers with no software installed. Connection to the internet is not required. A modular approach allows the option to not create some infrastructure elements. The solution is completely open source. A secondary benefit and use of the process is the establishment of a virtualisation platform for IT infrastructure, with the attendant advantage of capital and operating cost savings.

Keywords: Virtual Computing Lab; VCL; automated installation; virtualisation; enterprise IT infrastructure; open source; cloud computing; teaching; collaboration; enterprise networks; modular approach.

DOI: 10.1504/IJCC.2016.075114

International Journal of Cloud Computing, 2016 Vol.5 No.1/2, pp.134 - 143

Received: 04 Oct 2014
Accepted: 25 Jun 2015

Published online: 03 Mar 2016 *

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