GIS.lab - Rapid deployment of complete Open Source GIS LAN

One thing which keeps me excited these days is my new project called GIS.lab which began as a tool for simple, unbreakable, always-ready-and-clean deployment of multiple machines running software for Geographic Information Systems - QGIS. Shortly after finishing first workable version I realized big potential of this technology and started adding new features.

What is GIS.lab

GIS.lab is a solution to create fully equipped, easy-to-use, pre-configured, centrally managed, unbreakable and portable local area network (LAN) solution offering complete office and GIS software. It is configured to work out-of-box, without any need of configuration or other behind a scene knowledge, allowing users to keep high focus on their task. To achieve this goals it uses modern virtualization techniques in conjunction with automatic server provisioning and management.

 How it works

GIS.lab consists from one host machine running Linux, Windows or Mac operating system and any number of client computers with nearly no requirements - no operating system, even no hard disk is required (but no problem if they exists). All these computers must be connected with gigabit cables and switch. 

Host machine has two software requirements - virtualization software VirtualBox or VMware Workstation (or VMware Fusion on Mac) and Vagrant software for automatic server provisioning and management.

After installing required software on host machine and downloading GIS.lab sources only single one command is needed to install complete GIS LAN solution with out-of-box running central operating system and users management, services as file sharing, PostGIS database, map server and unlimited number client machines ready for immediate GIS work.

That magic command is called 'vagrant up' and orders to automatically provision GIS.lab server inside of virtual machine on the host computer with all mentioned services. It also installs key technology - Linux Terminal Server (LTSP), which enables to boot Xubuntu fat-client images on client machines from LAN. Great advantage of fat-client setup is that it enables to use all client machine resources, it is very friendly to server resources and provides real desktop experience without any thin-client glitches.

Where to use

This solution offers very large number of possible deployment scenarios from effective deployment of computers in brand new office or rapid provisioning of portable lab in the field to school lab installations where students can gain various knowledge from Linux systems principles to GIS development.
Central management, automatic deployment and unbreakability of client machines can save huge amount of obtaining and maintenance costs.

Future plans

My main goal is to provide complete set of services and Open Source tools for work and software development in GIS. Whole system will be provided as all-in-one solution with out-of-box running services capable to run with minimal maintenance requirements.
Very nice example of such services is included WMS Viewer application which is automatically publishing every user saved QGIS project and it is running without any additional configuration.

Also, I want to create fine tuned client desktop environments providing intuitive user interface for various GIS software.


Very valuable improvement will be addition of large amount of tutorials and how-to documents for day-to-day GIS tasks which is planed to develop with collaboration of Department of Geography and Regional Development at University of Prešov.

Development state

Project is currently in early development stage, constantly changing and adding features, but it is pretty much usable. It is now possible to deploy client machines as needed, perform various tasks in QGIS, collaborate on data editing with other users via PostGIS database, share files and publish data with WMS Viewer application and more.
I have released version 0.1, but until 0.2 is out I recommend using current master version from Git, because it is containing many new features.

Project released under GNU GPL version 3 and it is hosted on GitHub where You can find more detailed instructions. Project page is https://github.com/imincik/gis-lab .

I really appreciate all early testers, contributors, ideas, comments and patches.