Are your VMware training labs becoming the bottleneck?

VMware learners need their courses to be underpinned by solid lab infrastructure. Find out why – and how we can help.

If you provide VMware training courses, learner expectations are a constant concern.

You need a smooth onboarding process, high-value instructors and coherent assessment procedures. But the overall quality of your labs can be compromised by one thing that's sometimes overlooked: the quality of your lab infrastructure.

Why? Because learners want a smooth learning experience – and that smooth learning experience is only possible if the cogs are whirring smoothly behind the scenes.

Those learners don't need to know the inner workings of your infrastructure, any more than a homeowner needs to know how their house is wired. But we guarantee that learners will feel the difference if you neglect your infrastructure.

Poor lab infrastructure can lead to all kinds of bottlenecks. Learners may not be able to fully immerse themselves in the learning process and become frustrated by delays and restarts.

When it comes to training labs, course providers have a choice. They can keep their training labs in-house or outsource them to a lab hosting service like ours.

For big-name providers with the budget, in-house management is an option. For many, however, externally managed services are far more manageable.

That way, lab infrastructure is taken care of, so you can focus on all the other aspects that make up your services: from course design to onboarding, from marketing to teacher training.

Still not convinced? Let's take a closer look at the importance of lab infrastructure for VMware training labs.

Why is lab infrastructure so important for VMware training labs?

VMware training labs begin with the belief that VMware concepts, configurations and deployments are best learned through hands-on practice rather than theoretical textbook-style learning.

This is only possible with high-quality lab infrastructure. If infrastructure isn't whirring away smoothly in the background, learners will feel the difference.

With good lab infrastructure in place, learners can create, configure and manage everything from VMs, hosts, clusters and networks to full virtual datacenters. And they can do it in a realistic, isolated lab environment that reflects real-life production scenarios.

This hands-on environment gives learners the freedom to break things safely. They can repeat procedures until they're ingrained and test configurations with no negative effect on actual production environments.

These scenarios can be anything from workload deployment to storage configuration, from networking to troubleshooting.

What's more, learners can learn how compute, storage, automation, operations, networking and lifecycle management interact. And they can reset and rebuild environments until they've got the hang of business-critical procedures.

And at the end of the course, they're better prepared for certifications that will help them get jobs.

Learners also build the confidence and capability to help their organisations get the most out of their VMware technology. And they can get even more value from their investment by enabling broader adoption of this technology.

In short, lab infrastructure is essential for training up the next generation of VMware administrators and engineers.

Lab infrastructure turns basic learning about features into practical demonstrations of how they can be applied and troubleshot.

But what do we mean by "high-quality infrastructure"? What needs to be in place to ensure learner satisfaction, progress and results?



What makes good lab infrastructure for VMware training labs?

First and foremost, good lab infrastructure depends on adequate hardware resources.

That means sufficient CPU, RAM, storage and networking capacity. Without these, you won't be able to run multiple VMs and VMware components simultaneously.

With these resources in place, you can create isolated environments that look, feel and behave just like real production environments. This includes hosts, shared storage, virtual networking and management components.

Labs should be quick and easy to deploy, clone, snapshot and restore or reset. Any provisioning bottlenecks interrupt learning and frustrate your students. That's also why lab configurations must be underpinned by strong backup and recovery in the event of disruption.

They should also be isolated from actual production networks. Inadequate lab infrastructure means learners can't experiment safely.

Another bottleneck can arise if your lab infrastructure can't handle scaling. Every course provider wants to grow – but can your labs accommodate an influx of new learners?

Good lab infrastructure ensures fast, stable and reliable networking. Without this, network-related tasks become a chore, and both learners and instructors face disruptions.

It also needs the storage capacity to support key exercises related to datastores, shared storage and VM migration. Capacity means smoothness – and learners expect smoothness as well as expertise.

Finally, your lab infrastructure must support the latest VMware software versions. Without this capacity, learners will be insufficiently prepared for production environments.

Bottlenecks caused by inadequate lab infrastructure mean learner dissatisfaction. At best, this means they're frustrated. At worst, it can lead to learners abandoning the course or leaving negative reviews.

Bottlenecks also mean you're wasting time on troubleshooting that could be spent on course design, lab guides and the hundred other things that fill a VMware course provider's day.

At the end of the day, lab infrastructure needs to make things smooth for learners. If your VMware training labs succeed, so will your learners – and they're far more likely to come back for another course.

How to avoid VMware training labs becoming a bottleneck

If your training labs are causing bottlenecks, you have two options.

The first is to upgrade your infrastructure. If you have the resources, this can be a workable solution. But it costs money and takes time – time that could perhaps be better spent on the other jobs on your to-do list.

The second is to outsource lab hosting to a third-party provider like us. This typically translates to lower costs, a faster time-to-market for your courses, increased scalability and no time spent on troubleshooting. It can also increase your reach, opening up your courses to learners in different parts of the world.

For many, this is a far more manageable and cost-effective solution, ensuring a frictionless learning experience along with high levels of reliability and security.

Want to learn more about how we can help? Explore our course catalogue to see exactly what we can do, or get in touch with our experts to discuss your needs in detail.