Remote Access to Multiple Macs

[wccppa1]

This may be a little off topic but... We are trying to create a bank of 20 or so Mac Minis that students can access remotely. The physical devices will be in our data center and the students in a random classroom. I know we can use VNC and I am looking at Bomgar and Remotix. The biggest issue I foresee is how would a student know which device is available and not already being remote controlled. Has anyone tackled this issue? Thanks, Peter

[bmarks]

Apple Remote Desktop would give you a lot of this info such as "logged in user" in the column view.

[calumhunter · Accepted solution]

I certainly haven't tackled anything like that. But it doesn't sound to complicated.
I would probably setup a website and database.
I would have each of the 20 MacMini's running a script to send their current status, which could be as simple as getting the currently logged in user with a command like

console_user=$(stat -f%Su /dev/console)

I'd probably want to add some more data like current IP address etc ect.
upload all that to the website via the script which stores it in the database. Have some nice UI on the website which shows the machines and their current status/logged in user. Provide a button next to each machine that launches VNC/Screensharing. You can simply embed a link like

vnc://$ip_address

Where the ip address is the remote address of the mac and it will launch screensharing on a mac.
If they are on a PC they will probably just have to put the IP address of the Mac into their VNC application.

Anyway hopefully that gives you some ideas

[thoule]

You're looking to provide terminal services - Aqua Connect does that. Their config would be one big-ass machine and everyone connects to that and gets their own desktop. I think it costs more than a new computer for each student though. http://www.aquaconnect.net/

[wccppa1]

Thanks for the responses. You've given me some great ideas. Thank you. Peter

[calumhunter]

If you were looking to reduce physical foot print also. You can run OS X VM's on a Mac using ESXi

ie MacPro + ESXi and run 3 OS X VM's ( OS X EULA limits to 3 xOS X's per physical hardware - not a technical limitation)