[KLUG Members] Virtual Servers

[Doc Rea]

Hey all:

I'd like to get some feedback from folks on a challenge I'm trying to 
puzzle through...

The Situation

Once a year we offer a Web Admin class. I've done it for two years now. 
Once we used Linux (Redhat 7.3 at the time) and another we used both 
Linux (Redhat 9) and Windows (Server 2003). I'm planning on just going 
the *nix route this upcoming semester.

Here's the catch: In the lab we work in, the PCs are Windows. Last year 
I tried Virtual PC with a Linux image. It works, but it's very slow on 
our machines (P4, 256 RAM). We don't have room on the drives for 
dual-boot either. I did convert a few old machines into Linux boxes and 
they worked fine, but we couldn't access them in the classroom (they 
were in another lab).

We don't do a great deal of things, but we do have students do some of 
the following:
* set up an Apache webserver and work with httpd.conf (a lot)
* set up a DNS server
* set up a mail server
* set us a firewall and other security measures
* write some shell scripts, a Perl cgi, etc.

The Question

I've considered setting up an older server and giving students root 
access to it (it can't get out of our internal zone), but I want to 
partition off each student's work. I've looked for information on 
Virtual Servers, but can find nothing so far but marketing information.

Has anyone set up a Virtual Server (not Virtual Host) and partitioned 
off areas for different clients or testers who have full root access to 
http, mail, dns, etc. without spilling over into another account. I've 
read about it in FreeBSD (and don't mind going that way), but I can't 
seem to find useful guides on this. Any references you might have would 
be great.

Thanks.

Alan