Most enterprises work with virtual machines (VMs) and this has resulted in the dramatic increase in their usage. However, nowadays, it is easy to share photos, videos, and documents on different platforms. Imagine, what if we had a feature to share VMs with each other without complexities? Yes, you guessed it right, with Skytap you have the “Sharing Portals” feature, which can be used to share an environment to anyone who wants access to one or more VMs running in Skytap.
The sharing portal provides a URL-based access to one or more VMs in an environment. There are a variety of use cases that can be solved via sharing portals e.g., sharing VMs for a classroom training session, exams, collaboration with external users or customers, and virtual trails. The sharing portal also provides features that allow customization, gives you control over what you share, and how you share it. Examples of a few other sharing portals features include:
- Setting the permissions for each shared VM (In this feature you can specify whether a VM can be started or stopped from the sharing portal access link)
- Time and date limits for how long the sharing portal can be used
- Choose the portal type to create single or multiple portals, each with access to a different shared VM
Security is an important concern for all organisations. To solve this, Skytap offers two different options to provide additional security for the VMs being shared. You can either choose a password or leverage the SSO option where users will be authenticated by your Identity Provider (IdP) to access the environment from the shared URL. In our most recent update we included a new self-service option for Skytap administrators giving them the ability to enforce or not enforce password to sharing portals depending on the requirements.
Additionally, the sharing portal also includes a custom content tab where it allows you to include a second tab. This tab can contain HTML content unique to your organisation, including instructions, e.g., download links, links to other pages and custom support URL along with Skytap support.
You can learn more about the sharing portals here. As always, we continuously strive to make our product better, therefore, any suggestions for improvement or feedback can be done here – Support.
