Do you know what a Lab is?

Labs provide a practical and engaging learning experience for students looking to test their proficiency in a specific skill or subject. Within this protected real-world environment, learners can apply their acquired knowledge by completing various tasks that ensure a thorough understanding of the subject matter.

Labs are designed to cover a wide range of topics, including cloud computing platforms such as AWS, GCP, Azure, and Alibaba, as well as IT operations, security, data management, and software development. This diverse selection enables students to choose labs that align with their interests and career goals, ensuring that they acquire the skills that are highly relevant in their field.

All Cloud Academy labs are designed to be time-based. Our authors take an informed approach to analyzing each exercise and determine the optimal time required for completion, ensuring that students are reasonably challenged and able to complete the lab within the set time.

Labs provide learners with a secure and free* environment, eliminating the need to create, manage, or own additional accounts beyond their QA subscription. Learners can complete these labs without installing extra software on their personal computers, ensuring a seamless and hassle-free experience. This approach saves learners time and effort, allowing them to concentrate on the lab's objectives and skill development without additional technical requirements. Moreover, the secure environment safeguards learners' progress and ensures the confidentiality of any data generated during lab activities.

*Exceptions may apply for enterprise custom requests (please, contact Success Service).

Do you know our current Lab offering?

Lab types

• Playground Labs: These secure sandboxes allow users to experiment without setting up individual environments or using personal credentials. Unlike other lab types, playground labs do not have specific objectives. Instead, they enable users to explore their ideas or investigate their queries.

• Hands-on Labs: These guided scenarios help students practice and reinforce their knowledge through structured steps and validations. They provide clear instructions to help users through tasks by demonstrating various cloud or code functionalities.

• Lab Challenges: They provide real-world experience within a secure environment, validating and enhancing skills through mission-based exercises. These scenarios challenge users to solve problems, testing their knowledge and practical application abilities beyond basic environment familiarity.

• Assessments: Unguided, mission-based scenarios designed as a mandatory activity to assess learners' proficiency levels in a specific smart skill.

Lab features

• Bridge Function, or "Bridge," helps enterprise users access the Group Learning Platform cloud labs despite corporate firewalls, filtered networks, and software installation policies.

• Pause and Resume feature (Beta), offers added flexibility for learners needing breaks during labs. This feature allows learners to pause and later resume their progress. It was initially released for a subset of the most-used CA labs, including 20 cloud labs and all Remote Desktop labs.

• Ai Lab Assistant is a brand-new AI chatbot integrated into select labs, providing personalized support and feedback as you learn.

Labs can generally run on two types of environments:

• Code Labs are designed to practice, master, and assess a student's programming skills, where they complete coding exercises and challenges to showcase their proficiency in programming languages, frameworks, and libraries.

• Cloud Labs are tailored to practice, master, and assess a student's cloud technology-related skills, engaging them in real-world scenarios to solve challenges and exercises in a cloud environment.

Please note: Labs can be hybrid and run on code and cloud environments simultaneously. The integration of these two environments depends on the nature of the topic being tested.

We also offer remote desktop-based labs, allowing users to fully utilize lab offerings, even for exercises involving complex or expensive tools. Users access a virtual machine through a web-based remote desktop interface, pre-loaded with all the necessary tools, eliminating the need for direct interaction with the lab environment.

Note: Labs that do not include a dedicated environment are not supported.