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.

An example would be a class on using Matlab that met every Wednesday of a semester from 1pm to 3pm and had 12 students in it. We can set up a Block Reservation so that 12 machines would be preloaded with Matlab by 1pm each Wednesday and only the 12 students in the class would be 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.

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