QuickStart Guide: Using CloudShare Pro
to Create, Share, Track
What is CloudShare?
CloudShare’s SaaS platform is a quick and easy way to share copies of your complex IT environments, online. So you can collaborate with customers, partners, and colleagues – for demos, proofs-of-concept, training, or other enterprise applications – without wasting time copying gigabytes of software or shipping machines and people.
Going beyond basic webinar or “virtual lab” offerings, CloudShare enables users extended interaction in dedicated “hands on” production-grade replicas of their existing IT, delivered as cloud-based SaaS – while centrally monitoring and managing it all.
VMware, Cisco, SAP and others have adopted CloudShare as their vendor of choice to extend access to their virtual infrastructure from the Enterprise to the Cloud.
What is CloudShare Pro?
CloudShare Pro is a simplified version of CloudShare’s Enterprise product, designed for individual users or small groups. Unlike CloudShare Pro, CloudShare Enterprise supports unlimited end-user invitations and VM parameters, advanced analytics and management hierarchies, and customized branding. (See how they compare.)
Please follow the steps below to get started. We hope you enjoy your experience with CloudShare!
Step 1: Registration (a one-time process)
When you first attempt to use CloudShare Pro, as an end-user or an author, you’ll be asked to register. Registration enables CloudShare to save your preferences for future visits, across vendors.
Registration is a one-time process wherein you’ll choose your own username and password, and, on submission, immediately be logged in to the system.
We strongly encourage you to check your browser's ability to access the remote machines at
CloudShare.com here
On future visits, to return to your environments, you can proceed directly to http://use.CloudShare.com
Step 2: Create an Environment by adding or uploading machines
The first step in CloudSharing is to create an Environment.
Your Environment is a set of one or more machines, networked together, with appropriate software and descriptive web page cover. This combined entity is what you’ll make copies of for your colleagues.
For example, an environment might consist of a server, database, and directory. Or a desktop and server. Or just one desktop. All linked via a web page with a system diagram and descriptive text that you’ll enter.
To create an Environment, either choose the FastUpload tab, to upload an already-built VMware machine, or chose a machine+OS+application template from the list, enter a name and description, and click the Add Machine button.
Once you’ve added one or more machines, click the button to continue to step 3, where you will describe your environment for end-users.
Step 3: Add a title and description to your Environment’s web cover page
When you invite colleagues to their own copy of the environment you’re building, they will receive an email with an URL.
When they click on the URL, they’ll arrive at a mini-website showing a system layout of your machines, the description of each machine that you entered in step 2, and an overall environment name and description (like “Kevin’s Demo” and “Welcome to my demo, remember to start the Windows server named Kev2003 first”).
Enter that main window name and description at this stage, then click the button to continue to step 4, where you will start your environment.
Step 4: Launch your Environment
If you’re ready to establish your first environment, click “run”.
Remember, after setting up your initial environment, you can always go back and edit it, adding or removing machines.
(At this stage of the CloudShare beta, you are limited to six machines per environment, and you can author one environment at a time.)
Ready to go? Click that Submit button!
Step 5: Launch your Environment
Congratulations! Your environment has been created.
If you’d like to change anything (description, machines), just choose the appropriate button on the right side of your screen. Or, choose one of the “view” buttons on your machines’ description to log in and further customize or install software. (See step 6.)
Once you’re ready to share copies with colleagues, click the “snapshot” button on the right. It will make an exact copy of your system in its current state, for you to share with others, OR revert your environment to if you goof during later experimentation. (See step 7.)
(We encourage snapshots even if you’re not sharing yet – they’re a great way to avoid hours of wasted work. Always take a snapshot before a risky install, for example!)
Step 6: Login and customize your Environment
To log in and further customize or install software, simply click the “view” button on the description of any one of your machines.
A new window will open, and in a few seconds, show you the machine’s desktop. (The first time you do this, your browser may ask to install an RDP remote viewing plugin. Please allow this.)
When you see the desktop, you’ve successfully logged in to one of your machines! You can configure it as desired, and install new things. It’s all yours.
For example, you may want to load data or software. There are two ways to do that.
Option #1: from this machine, you have full internet access. Use FTP, Telnet, webmail, or browse to your favorite site.
Option #2: if you click to re-enable File Sharing (marked as disabled by default for security), then click on My Computer on the desktop you see, you’ll see your local hard drives – and can copy via drag & drop to the desktop you see. Be warned, this approach requires a high-speed connection or small files… don’t try uploading hundreds of MB on your home dialup or 128kbps DSL line.
Step 7: Take a Snapshot, for backup or to share your Environment with others
To start the process of taking a snapshot, click the “Snapshot” button on the right side of the screen. On the bottom of the screen, a place to enter name and description will appear.
Before a snapshot of your environment is captured, you’ll need to enter a name and description for this environment, much like you did for your main environment.
When you have entered that information, click the “Take Snapshot” button directly below where you entered the information.
When you click the “Take Snapshot” button, the system ask for confirmation – whether you really want to publish.
If you confirm, the system will lock you out for up to 10 minutes while it processes the snapshot. Now might be a good time to go get a snack…
Step 8: Share your brilliance – give a copy of your Environment to other people
Once you have taken a snapshot (step 7), you can click the “share environment” button.
On the “Share” page, you can enter the name and email address of a colleague to whom you’d like to give this copy of your environment (well, the environment as it existed at the time you took your last snapshot).
Note that your colleague will see all the information you’ve entered.
You can send up to five invitations. Each will allow the recipient 5 hours of time inside their demo (note that the demo environment suspends when noone is logged in to it).
Again, it is important to emphasize that your Environment and the copy you’re sending operate completely independently.
So you could build a base environment, snapshot it, and send it to one colleague – then further modify your environment, snapshot, and send to another colleague – and you’d now have three copies, each operating independently (and thus configurable separately).
Step 9: Track usage – see what your invitees are doing
Once you have shared copies of your environment (step 8), you can sit back and watch your colleagues’ use of your various issued mini-data-centers from the "invitations" page.
Don’t hesitate to call ‘em up and remind them to log in… or praise them for using your environment a lot.
Please note: When you issue a copy of your environment to others, they start from your snapshot, and can add or reconfigure the software… but cannot change the number or types of machines, or issue new copies to other people.
That said, if they click the "Upgrade to Author" link in the upper right corner of their environment home page, they’ll become like you – able to add or change machines too, and issue invites – but with the advantage of starting from the environment they’ve been using as their base environment. (Note that the "Upgrade to Author" process, while usually speedy, can take up to 30 minutes.)
