Shared Folder - Profile/Instance Behaviour Question

netuser187 · Post by **netuser187** » Tue Oct 11, 2022 9:42 am

Hello community,

I have not been able to find a post in the forum that answers this - apologies if there is such a post and I missed it.

Question:
My team are using eve-ng and are experiencing behaviour that we find undesirable; I am trying to understand whether this is expected behaviour and whether there are any settings or configurations that we can use to resolve this or whether we need to change how we use eve-ng to get around this.

Background:
We have a lab that we want to share for test/demo purposes. This runs a linux/ubuntu vm instance. This is connected to the Cloud0/mgmt network for external access. The linux vm has updates installed, including a monitoring application that communicates with a SaaS service for telemetry export and dashboard updates.

Problem/Behaviour:

What we experiencing is as follows: the lab was initially created in my personal folder. The vm was given a static ip address and could communicate to the Internet and SaaS platform.

I then moved the lab to the Shared folder such that other users could access it.

We noticed that when I used the lab, the vm retained all of the updates, had the client application installed, and had network access.

However other users when starting the lab, seemed to be running another instance. This vm used the base linux image without any of the updates installed. It also shared the nic mac address and had no network access.

For this type of lab/demo, our requirement is actually to have it 'always-on', and simply allow users to access a single running instance rather than operating their own profile.

According to the Cookbook document section 7.2.1.2 -

NOTE: Every user has its own profile; this means that every user has an independent Running folder where this lab runs independently from other users.

NOTE: Labs can be created and modified (e.g. settings and preconfigs) by an Admin or an Editor user. The User role can use the lab only exactly the way it was configured by an Admin or Editor and is unable to change any settings.

NOTE: Admins and Editors can create folders and labs inside the Shared directory

I therefore assume that this is expected behaviour, and that the best way forward is to simply provide alternative mgmt access via SSH/vnc to the correct linux vm instance ip rather than via eve-ng? This approach does present a mgmt problem in that only my user/profile can access the 'true' lab via eve-ng and start the image in case of any problems occuring the the eve-ng hypervisor or when the eve-ng server is restarted etc.

What would be great is if a single profile/instance could be shared in the Shared Folder between multiple users in someway for these 'always-on' type scenarios!