OpenGnSys: Centralized management and deployment of operating systems in the classroom

This paper presents a complete system for management, maintenance, and deployment of operating systems called OpenGnSys. Such a system has been tested in a real teaching laboratory at the University of Huelva, Spain, which is devoted to practical works on networking. OpenGnSys operations, performed in an easy and intuitive way from a graphical console with remote functions, are managed by a high availability cluster. Its implementation provides a dual backup function of both hardware infrastructure and classroom operating services. In addition to lab management, we propose a quality control procedure by site acceptance tests. These tests stand for a standard methodology for determining the compliance degree according to classroom operation and specifications. As a result, this methodology has reduced the effort in classroom administration and operation.