Requesting a Block/Classroom Reservation

VCL Block Reservations

Block Reservations are a way to have a set of machines preloaded with a particular environment at specified times and made available to a specific group of users. This is very useful for classroom use and for workshops. They can be made available on a repeating schedule such as when a course meets each week. Block Reservations only allocate machines for the group of users - they do not create the actual, end user reservations for the machines -- all users still must log in to the VCL web site and make their own reservations DURING the period a block reservation is active.

For example: A class using Matlab meets every Wednesday of a semester from 1pm to 3pm and has 12 students in it. Set up a Block Reservation so that 12 machines are preloaded with Matlab by 1pm each Wednesday and only the 12 students in the class are able to make a reservation for those machines. By "prealoading", we mean that the wait time for the reservation would be < 1 minute. This guarantees that each user will be able to log in to VCL, create a reservation, and be connected to the VCL machine within a couple of minutes.

An important thing to note is that each user needs to login AFTER the block becomes active to make a NEW reservation of the block-reservation image, i.e., in this example during the class and NOT BEFORE 1pm. Logging in before that may actually cause delays for the users since other than the block resources would be used, and those images may have longer preparation times.

To request a Block Reservation, use the help form and include the following information in the message:

• the VCL environment to be loaded on each machine
• the number of users that will need to make a reservation
• either an existing VCL user group to grant access to the machines, or if it is for an NCSU course, the course and section number -- additionally, you need to have requested a WolfWare locker for the course (again, for NCSU courses only; the WolfWare locker allows us to pull the course roll)
• the times the Block Reservation will be used, this can be
  • single dates and times (i.e. 11/6/08 from 1pm to 6pm and 11/21/08 from 9am to 2pm)
  • days/times of the week if it repeats on a weekly basis (i.e. every Tues. and Thurs. from 1:30pm to 3:30pm)
  • day of the month if it repeats on a monthly basis (i.e. the first Monday of every month from 11am to 2pm)
• the date of the first use of the Block Reservation
• the date of the last use of the Block Reservation