Virtual macs and/or remote restore app ... need help please

[mathfantasia]

So my end goal is to share a mac over the internet that restores itself after every user. Basically the end goal of this one mac is to buy a bunch of macs and start an online mac/windows library/timeshare (for iwork/office and maybe flash/dreamweaver).

These are the three solutions I've come up with so far. Both have parts I don't know anything about.

First, find a software that will remotely restore my mac mini. I want to give users almost complete control over the mac and this would give them total control.

Second, make a limited user and secure the mac. I don't really want to deal with security, but if I can't do the first idea I am willing to learn. I still don't know exactly how to restore the mac mini after every user, but I am guessing the admin can run a script to do that.

Finally, get vmware to make virtual Mac OS X servers. The problem with this idea is that OS X costs more than a discounted mac mini. There's no OS X server family pack. I wish they would let me virtualizer mac os X because that's what I actually want to do, but I guess that's not an option.

So any comments on what I should do?

 

[BobZune]

Here are some thoughts/outline (details will depend on your requirements and 'concept of operations' you have in mind):

You can create a standard user account and limit it (as long as 1 and 2 are not in conflict on the total control part). http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20030603190314390 is one example (read comments too) of how to do it from a command line. You can also look at http://www.intego.com/rmc/ or similar things for remote management. Or have someone do a script the admin-user can execute when a std-user is "done" (depending on your requirements -- perhaps a reboot, with admin user running the script and then logging off to get it ready for the next one). There are also ways ot restore a user account from a DMG file -- for interactive method see http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.5/en/9015.html (but you might want to look into automating it).

VMWare solution will be better/easier, but you know the limitations already (server vs client-desktop OS X license). An Enterprise quality VMserver (e.g. like ESX) would be the prefered solution, with price tradeoffs.