Mbed Studio multi-user lab environment

Mbed Studio
1

We have a request to install Mbed Studio in a lab of 100 Windows computers the multiple students use. Installing Mbed Studio should not be difficult, however on first launch the product downloads 3.12gb into “%localappdata%\Mbed Studio”. The download took over 1 hour. The space is the first concern. With multiple students using each computer and 3.12gb is just the initial download, this could cause our computers to run out of space quickly. Second, labs are usually only 2 hours long. Waiting 1 hour just to be able to use the product is excessive. Also, if the student moves to a different machine, they have to download everything all over again.

Are there any suggestions to be able to use this software in a multi-user environment? Is it possible to download a copy of the OS to one shared location and mark it as read-only so it only has to be downloaded to each machine once?

2

Hi @Shawn_Kaluf,

Thank you for the feedback. We will investigate if there is a possibility to reduce that number even further. In the meantime I recommend following setup:

  • Make sure that on Windows you selected an option to install Mbed Studio for all users on the system. In that case all tools used by Studio will be shared across all users and there will be only one copy of them.
  • Use shared Mbed OS feature: Managing libraries - Managing libraries | Mbed Studio Documentation - It will save 1GB of Disk space per user

Thanks,
Arek - Studio team

3

Hi Shawn,

have you considered using Keil Studio Cloud instead? It offers the same functionalities but doesn’t require any installation.

If you want to give it a go you can find it at https://studio.keil.arm.com/ .

Have a good day,
Federico - Mbed Studio team

4

Thank you both for your feedback. I just tried the cloud website which looks pretty slick. I will check with the instructor to see if that meets their needs.

As for Mbed Studio, I am running the install as admin and am selecting the all users option. I have also read the “Managing libraries” article several times. I just am not clear as to when that option needs to be enabled and what folder it needs to be pointed to.

Once the install has finished, I am left with the following:

“c:\program files\mbed studio” - 607 mb
“c:\programdata\mbed studio” - 2947 mb

I launch Mbed Studio and logging in, at which point the product starts downloading the OS to the following folder:

“%localappdata%\Mbed Studio”

If i kill the process git.exe, I am able to go into the preferences for the user and configure the shared location. Again, I am unsure if I need to use “c:\programdata\mbed studio” or specify some folder under that location.

I feel like we are close, but I am just missing some step in the process.