WinLab, GVSU's virtual Windows computer lab that was stood up in response to the Covid-19 Pandemic switch to virtual learning in the Winter term of 2020, is at the end of its lifespan and will sunset following the Winter 2025 term, on May 1st. Beginning May 1st, the URL winlab.eduftp.net will highlight the new environment, with detailed descriptions of the available environments that will be accessible via my.eduftp.net to all GVSU faculty and students.

Project Summary and Impact

Who is impacted?
All faculty and students who currently utilize WinLab. 

Why are we changing the environment?
As computational needs have grown significantly across the colleges, IT has looked to cloud vendors for a worthy successor to the WinLab environment, one that will meet the current and future needs of all departments. Utilizing a managed environment allows for a more agile and scalable solution that provides computational power beyond current on-premises hardware capabilities without significant investment in new hardware. The new environment will also allow for multi-use case scenarios for specialized course or program delivery, research needs, and more.

How we got here:
In the summer of 2024, the Academic Research Computing (ARC) department partnered with Propeller to pilot their virtualized environment. Over the fall 2024 term, the Padnos College of Engineering leveraged the environment which provides significantly more powerful desktops with GPU's allowing for more advanced work in resource-intensive applications like SolidWorks, Ansys, Altium, Vivado and others that did not run effectively in the existing WinLab.

As part of this project, the existing software loads of both on-campus physical and virtual computer labs were inventoried and re-evaluated. This process included a review of usage statistics and outreach to faculty for their input on proposed changes. Through this collaboration a significant number of applications were deemed no longer necessary, allowing for more than 50 applications to be eliminated, reducing the footprint of each machine and ensuring GVSU's environments are running the most up-to-date and secure versions of each package.

Within the new environment, specialized stacks of virtual machines will be available providing a better user experience that is less cluttered while ensuring those resource-intensive applications have the necessary computing power our faculty and students need. During the Winter term, as the environments are internally tested and approved they will be made available for testing and review by faculty and students alike before the sunsetting of the existing WinLab.

Testing specific to the use of ArcGIS Pro by the Natural Resources & Environmental Management department is also informing the direction of this project as the ARC team continues to improve on the configurations and delivery of resource-intensive applications. 

Select courses in CIS have also been testing the environment for use in lab exercises related to networking and cybersecurity where individual virtual environments are required and network traffic segregation is necessary.

Project Timeline

Phase 1: Engineering-specific concurrent virtual desktops deployed for the Fall of 2024 deployed into two stacks depending on the applications and dictated by EGR faculty.

Phase 2: 
•    Piloting Propeller with CIS-specific labs (known as cyber labs) to compare against existing solution. 
•    Testing of Propeller with current software load from WinLab in a concurrent environment.
•    Testing of Propeller persistent stack with ArcGIS Pro.
•    Testing of Propeller persistent stack with specialized DB servers in use by CIS.

November - December 2024: ARC communicating with A/Ad’s and faculty about the upcoming changes, validating software needs.
January - February 2025: ARC verifies software needed in WinLab and physical labs.
January – April 2025: ARC communicating with campus regarding the upcoming changes starting with A/Ad’s, UTC, ATAC and other entities where applicable as well as the IT Newsletter and other communication avenues. 
March - April 2025: ARC will publish KB articles and how-to videos specific to each environment. New environment(s) will be opened up to general users, ARC to solicit input from users and work out any issues identified. Message to be added to homepage of WinLab letting users know it will go away on May 1st and giving links to test the new environment.
May 2025: WinLab will be sunset, Propeller instances will be available in my.eduftp.net and winlab.eduftp.net will display a splash page with information about the new environment.
May - August 2025: ARC to continue monitoring and working with faculty and students where necessary. 
August 2025: ARC to hold drop-in lab hours for those who would like hands-on assistance with the environment. Communications to go out to all of campus regarding the environment with links to tutorials and KB’s.