Retiring VDI/Guacamole - May 13th, 2023

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the remote classroom environment required remote access to computing power and academic software titles for students to continue their education.  CAD’s VDI service was spun up quickly by the CADTech team to meet the demands of virtual learning.

Today, RIT has come back to a fully in-person modality, which has been great for the entire university.  Labs and classrooms are full of collaboration and energy once again.

After evaluating the resources required to maintain such a complex virtually accessible infrastructure, the security risks it imposes, and the demand for such a service, it has been decided that we will be retiring CAD’s VDI services come May 13th, 2023. All software that was accessible on the remote computers will continue to be available on any standard lab computer, and we continue to push for open computing spaces for students to use when needed.

Step-by-step guide

Make sure you're connected to your WiFi and the internet is up and running.

1. 
   
   For windows, continue following these steps
   

2. Visit this URL: https://request.cad.rit.edu/vdi. Doing this will enroll you and allow you to access to VDI virtual machines.
   

   

   
   

3. Now that you are enrolled you can go directly to https://vdi.cad.rit.edu (Bookmark this link).

4. You'd get a list of labs that you can chose to work with. 
   

   

   
   

5. Select a lab, and then use your login credentials like you would while physically sitting in a Lab.

6. For a smoother experience, we'd recommend to use the largest monitor possible and get in full screen browser mode with Chrome or Firefox.