Aqua Connect enables remote access to Mac OS X platform for students and staff

In 2007, we identified a need for our students to connect their personal laptops to laboratory environments through our wireless network. The scheme planned for students to work on site licensed software, print and access network resources through a terminal environment accessible through their web browser. Aqua Connect allowed us to have this functionality for both our Macintosh and PC lab environments.

Our current set up includes a single Intel dual core Xserve attached to our 7TB XSan that distributes Aqua Connect Remote Desktop Services lab sessions to our students through the wireless network around our university.

We plan in the future to extend Aqua Connect to multiple machines; next year should see the addition of a second Xserve.

Students primarily use ACRDS, but some staff use it for Mac based lesson planning on their PCs. Aqua Connect allows our students to connect to a Macintosh environment from their primarily PC laptops, so all our students are exposed to the multi-platform environment they can expect to encounter in New Zealand schools regardless of their personal equipment choices. Best of all there's almost no configuration that needs to be performed on the student’s machines because they can just connect through the web!

We use The ACRDS solution in conjunction with Microsoft Office, Corel Graphics, Google Documents and Inspiration. ACRDS could also be used to enable staff to connect to their Mac environment from home.

“Aqua Connect is a great product, we see this as a real linchpin of our IT infrastructure in the future!”

- Paul Cowan
Technical Support Team Leader