Share Access to your Virtual Machine
It is necessary to share your VM with your user research group for the following reasons:
- VM gets shut down and you lose access if new software needs to be installed.
- VM is allocated to multiple team members for a particular project.
- You travel on a holiday or change workplaces and someone else needs to take over.
Your VM configuration must be attached to a drive and .
From this point, there are two ways you can share a VM.
1. Share for User Access
When you give users access to use your VM, you will share a part of the VM with the users; however, they will not be able to approach the drives hence minimizing the security risks.
To share a VM configuration for user access navigate to tab, in the Virtual Machines
section.
- Select the VM configuration you would like to share.
- Select the
User Management
card on the right panel. - Click the
Add User(s)
button at the top panel. - Follow the instructions from add user(s) to VM configuration section.
- When sharing VM configuration for user access the system also shares the drive attached to it, however, it prevents direct access to the drives.
- Once shared with a user, the VM configuration may be launched by that user directly.
- Same-team users can share the VM further only with other same-team users.
You may have a large number of managers
in a VM without them having access to its drives.
2. Share for VM Co-ownership
When you share VM for co-ownership purposes, you are giving direct access to the VM drives. This must be carefully conducted since the co-owners of the drives may take the drives for themselves and make their own VM with them leaving you with no storage space. As a result, you should share the VM with only one individual.
To share a VM configuration for co-ownership navigate to tab, in the Virtual Machines
section.
- Select the VM configuration you would like to share.
- Click the
Three dots
icon in the top right. - Select the
Share
button from the options. - Follow the instructions from share VM configuration section.
Important
- Do not casually share a VM for co-ownership unless you have already selected a co-owner in the first place.
- Users must be part of the same team to share virtual machine configurations.
- Users who are shared with the virtual machine require re-login to view the virtual machine in their VM list.
- View which VM was shared with you in its
User Management
card, where all users belonging to the VM are displayed. - View the owners of the VM by selecting the
Managers
section. - For best practice, we recommend two owners per VM.
- Inactive VMs will turn off automatically due to server resource management practice (this action may be edited).
- Project tagging can prevent access to a VM, no matter your user role.
- Projects are access-controlled by admins as well as cryptographically encrypted by the AES keys. As a result, admins and users require mutual collaboration to make the VM operations functional.