Lab environments

Hi,

I am currently working on a project with some fellow system admins to provide ICT students and professionals with training and testing labs online. Our intention is to provide virtualised servers where students/professionals can install their operating systems of choice and any required applications. Our environments will be available via the browser, based on VMWare technology and will scale as required.

For example you could create a Windows 2008 Server domain controller on one server, Exchange on another and Window 7 test client on a third to create an environment for studying Exchange/Outlook management. Alternatively you may wish to deploy Redhat and Evolution.

We think having access to servers that can be deployed in a manner similar to production situations will help you gain your certification and practical experience using operating systems and applications.

We are in early days and would like your input on what you need as ICT students for training. Would you need 2, 3 or 4 servers? Would you need frequent access to the servers? Are there any particular scenarios or requirements you would need in a lab? Snapshot? Templates?

Any feedback would be great. If you have the time to fill in this short survey (10 Q’s) that would be appreciated.

Thanks,

David

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Comments

earweed

Welcome to TE and good luck in your work on this project. If you are going to have any success at this you are going to need to develop a really huge, multifaceted infrastructure. Most people who would have a need of this service are those who don't have access to a machine capable of running multiple (4 or more) VM's at once.
Most people I've heard from (myself until lately) are limited as to number of VM's able to run at once and also could use the ability to construct network for the servers. Ability to communication between VM's is a must.

cloudosity

earweed wrote: »

Welcome to TE and good luck in your work on this project. If you are going to have any success at this you are going to need to develop a really huge, multifaceted infrastructure. Most people who would have a need of this service are those who don't have access to a machine capable of running multiple (4 or more) VM's at once.
Most people I've heard from (myself until lately) are limited as to number of VM's able to run at once and also could use the ability to construct network for the servers. Ability to communication between VM's is a must.

Hi Earweed, thanks for the welcome.

I agree on the head-count of servers. My day job is a systems engineer and most proof of concept tasks I work on require 3 to 5 servers. Things like Windows 2008 R2 and Exchange 2010 can easily run up to five. Simpler tasks like learning AD / Group Policy can be done with 2.

On the network / comms side of things we will definitely be providing networking between servers and possibly full access to the net depending on peoples needs.

Thanks for your feedback.

David

cloudosity

cloudosity wrote: »

Hi,

I am currently working on a project with some fellow system admins to provide ICT students and professionals with training and testing labs online. Our intention is to provide virtualised servers where students/professionals can install their operating systems of choice and any required applications. Our environments will be available via the browser, based on VMWare technology and will scale as required.

For example you could create a Windows 2008 Server domain controller on one server, Exchange on another and Window 7 test client on a third to create an environment for studying Exchange/Outlook management. Alternatively you may wish to deploy Redhat and Evolution.

We think having access to servers that can be deployed in a manner similar to production situations will help you gain your certification and practical experience using operating systems and applications.

We are in early days and would like your input on what you need as ICT students for training. Would you need 2, 3 or 4 servers? Would you need frequent access to the servers? Are there any particular scenarios or requirements you would need in a lab? Snapshot? Templates?

Any feedback would be great. If you have the time to fill in this short survey (10 Q’s) that would be appreciated.

Thanks,

David

Hi guys,

Just wanted to thank everyone who took the time to answer my survey, was great to get a good response.

Thanks,

David