The data storage and processing, as well as the utilities used or demonstrated in the courses,  demand a well-considered ICT-setup for the Summer School.
All computers should have (and maintain) an equivalent configuration, even as new software tools are added and new hardware is acquired.
The computers should be easy to reinstall if something goes wrong. Furthermore, the installation and administration work should be 
kept to a minimum (manual installs on all laptops, one after the other, are to be avoided if possible).

Virtualisation
For all these reasons, we are now virtualisation.
A basic system install on the laptops acts as an environment for the virtual systems ("virtual computers") where the real work is done.

The virtual machines are unaware of the physical hardware underneath, they only see the "hardware"  that the virtualisation engine presents.
So they can run on any computer as long as the virtual environment is well configured : without any trouble at all, we can introduce completely
new machines and still run the exact same "computer" on them.

Overall the management is *much* easier.
In fact the whole system, with all software and all configurations, with every single bookmark from the browser and
every colour preference preserved, is stored in a single file : the image (.img) file.
This file can be copied and transmitted to any other machine - and within minutes you can continue to work on with the system just like you left it.
Administration of all laptops (on all that different hardware) thus becomes a question of installing and configuring a single system,
 and the copying it on to the other machines. If a system should become unstable or crash, then reinstalling is only a matter of copying a new,
virgin image file and starting it up.

Data storage
All data will be stored centrally, on an external hard disk.
That way, data can be shared between different systems during the Summer School, and regular (centralised) backups can be made.
After the Summer School, it is very convenient to find all data (GPS-offloads,  pictures, ... ) in a single location.
Last year we had to start up every single machine and dig for any information left in any local folder...

* internet caching proxy : all connections to the internet will pass the Squid proxy server installed on the central server, caching the page requests for faster responses.
For example when using Google Earth, the Summer School region (Slovakia Gemer region) will be asked for time and time again -
 so a local copy (in the cache) will greatly speed up the process and save bandwidth.

* central data storage : a direct FTP-link to a central data folder is available on all the student systems :
you can store your own data and access data from others. The data is regularly backed up.

* file server : for the courses and GIS work, many documents with background information, maps,
data points and so on should be accessible to everyone. Instead of storing all these (hundreds of Megabytes) on the laptops,
they are accessible on the central server.

* GPS offload & conversion : the central machine will have the tools for easy GPS device offload,
and conversion of the data points to file formats usable in Google Earth (KML), spreadsheets (.csv) and GIS programs (.shp).
These files are then accessible to everyone.

Technical configuration
All software used for the Summer School is Open Source Software and free (as in "beer", so available at no cost).
The laptops run Ubuntu GNU/Linux as their base system, a GNU/Linux flavour based on Debian
The virtualisation is done using KVM, the Kernel Virtual Machine, easy to install on Linux.
The virtual machines run Ubuntu Linux as well.