Re: Keyloggers in computer labs

[Dave Koontz <dkoontz () MBC EDU>]

I was at a VMWare presentation a couple weeks ago, and they are actually
promoting using the Free Player for your users to run either your own custom
VM's, or their prebuilt ones.  They are especially promoting their "Secure
Browser" VM.

If you think they gave away too much with their free player, this Monday
they announced they are making their GSX server FREE. ($1400-$2800 retail).
Their hope is to obviously get you to their more powerful and expensive ESX
product.  However, you can certainly use this free tool to create all the
VM's your users need, or virtualize some of your servers.


http://www.vmware.com/products/server/

VMware to make server product free
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-6034615.html


---
Dave Koontz
Mary Baldwin College
Staunton, VA



-----Original Message-----
From: Graham Toal [mailto:gtoal () UTPA EDU]
Sent: Tuesday, February 07, 2006 11:05 AM
To: SECURITY () LISTSERV EDUCAUSE EDU
Subject: Re: [SECURITY] Keyloggers in computer labs

> Hmmm.  That sounds promising. I'm not that familiar with VMWare. Will
> it work with the free VMWare player? Do you know what kind of
> licensing issues there may be? Can we buy just one copy of VMWare
> workstation, make lab images, and distribute them to the labs using
> the player?

My understanding is that this is legal and approved of, but I don't work for
vmware so check it properly yourself.

Personally I think they gave away too much with that player, but I'm
certainly taking advantage of it myself!  My desktop is currently running
one VPC for web browsing and email reading, another for Linux R&D, another
for Windows-hosted R&D, and one of those also runs a Vax/VMS emulator (simh)
for legacy work :-)  (I have another image with a full install of Oracle
Server on it for when I'm doing database work, but I don't run that by
default because its a memory pig)

If you're a real cheapskate you can probably build the images with the eval
version of the full product, but I wouldn't recommend that.  May be legal
but it's not the decent thing to do.  Likewise taking an existing image
under VMWare player and installing a different OS from within it is just
plain cheeky.

(At UTPA we have bought quite a few VMware licenses of various descriptions
so I don't feel at all bad about taking advantage of their free player)


Graham