Locally-Hosted Labs versus Virtual Labs

[Becky Mann]

Hi everyone. I'm a product developer for CompTIA's training products. We're currently doing research on how labs are implemented in various training programs. Currently, our instructor guides come with directions on how to set up computers in the classroom in order to run the lab activities. We also offer a separate product, CompTIA Labs, that can be used in conjunction with the guides to run the lab activities through a virtual lab platform, Learn on Demand Systems.

How are labs run in your organization? Do you use a virtual lab platform like Learn on Demand or do you use locally-hosted machines? What are the benefits and drawbacks to your current setup?

 

[haydonbeagley]

Currently at BluescreenIT we use labs locally built-in house, but there has been some occasions now that we've used the virtual labs. Depends on how the course is being run and if the trainer requests the online labs. It's nice to we have the online labs just incase a build doesn't go to plan or runs behind due to other commitments.

 

[ghlameyer]

Labs have become essential. Previously we did labs I wrote on Windows machines. Working for a new organization who want to use your new courseware for Security+. I am trying to setup labs and home today. The choices for online labs are somewhat confusing, old and new. I will let you know how setup goes. For VM I have always used virtualbox. Now need to figure new labs for the hypervisor environment. My past experience was that logical operations labs just did not work. I am hoping for better results now but don't see they have done any improvements over the last six months.

 

[Tess Sluijter]

I have seen a few variants.

SANS and a few other security classes I've joined pass out USB drives to each student, that come pre-filled wth one or more virtual machines, compatible with the most common virtualization platforms. They also warn students up front, multiple times before class, that they need to setup something like VMWare Player on their laptops and that they need to test it beforehand.

PRO: branded USB sticks as goodie, no downloads needed (and thus no bandwidth load)
CON: takes an upfront investment of having the USB drives prepared in bulk (and updated in case of changes).

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Others take the VM-approach, but rely upon tools like Vagrant to build the VM on-site, on-the-fly.

PRO: updates to the labs are easy, just one rebuild away.
CON: potentially a big load on bandwidth in the training location, Vagrant et al are potentially confusing to the less-experienced student

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Still others make use of Docker containers, pulling them on-the-fly from the Internet or an internal / locally hosted Docker repository.

PRO: updates to the labs are easy, just one rebuild away, great for covering a few very specific applications/services.
CON: potentially a big load on bandwidth in the training location, Vagrant et al are potentially confusing to the less-experienced student

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Finally I have taken a few classes where the training org provides an online lab environment that is to be accessed through VPN or a web portal. This is often the case where a large, simulated environment is needed that can simply not be run on a student's laptop.

PRO: everything is fully under your control in your organization's servers
CON: 100% online connection needed during class, total cost of setting up and maintaining this cloud-hosted multi-student environment