The evolution of a virtualized laboratory environment

Stackpole, Bill

doi:10.1145/1414558.1414618

Cited by 16 publications

(12 citation statements)

References 2 publications

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“…VMware Workstation is free for VMware Academic Program members but there are certain usage restrictions. VMware is proven to be a reliable program to support centralized virtual labs hosted on college campuses [4,5] while VirtualBox can be a viable choice for students to run virtual machines on their personal computers because it is more lightweight and less resource intensive compared to VMware. No major reliability issues were reported in our labs during the fall 2008 semester.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Virtualization could help the reduction of hardware and maintenance costs, improve the availability of lab resources, and expedite the deployment of new technologies. Some studies indicated that students using virtual machines to do the labs performed as well as students using physical machines in a traditional computer lab [5]. Most early virtualization implementations involved a centralized approach.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Students either sat in a computer room to use them or connected remotely to an on-campus lab to use them. The centralized virtual lab, as the replacement of the physical lab, was successful in reducing cost and in improving availability and performance [4,5].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring virtual environments in a decentralized lab

2009

SIGITERes. IT

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Virtualization technology has been used in a decentralized manner to deliver hands-on labs in an intrusion detection course in the past three years. The availability of free virtualization software and low-cost but high-performance personal computers made it possible for students to run virtual machines and perform lab exercises on their own computers. Different virtualization options including VMware, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) were explored. Both VMware and VirtualBox were proven to be effective tools for lab purposes. The decentralized virtual lab approach and the centralized remote lab approach (ex. VCL) can be complementary.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Exploring virtual environments in a decentralized lab

2009

SIGITERes. IT

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“…Thus, the transition begun with Bullers et al (2006) in the fourth tier and carried forward by Stackpole (2008) in the fifth tier was completed. Moreover, the studies began to address the utilization limitations present and perhaps residual from previous literature.…”

Section: The Sixth Tier Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Building on the preceding work (Du & Wang, 2008;Stackpole, 2008;Schweitzer & Boleng, 2009;Stewart et al, 2009;Stockman, 2003) the authors detailed how to implement VMware ESXi along with the Lab Manager add on package. The laboratory infrastructure -multiple virtualization hosts assembled in a cluster and comprised of large amounts of memory, fast CPU and disk storage -represented a more sophisticated design relative to previous research.…”

Section: The Sixth Tier Of Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Understanding System Utilization as a Limitation Associated with Cybersecurity Laboratories – A Literature Analysis

Pittman

2013

JITE:Research

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Executive SummaryThe use of laboratories as part of cybersecurity education is well evidenced in the existing literature. We are informed about the benefits, different types of laboratories and, in addition, underlying learning theories therein. Existing research also demonstrates that the success of employing cybersecurity laboratory exercises relies upon controlling or minimizing potential challenges in the maintenance and usage of these laboratories. However, to date there has not been any effort to examine the possible limiting factors associated with system utilization in such laboratories.In order to begin addressing such laboratory system resource utilization factors, this study examined existing research with the objective to gain an understanding of system utilization as a limitation to employing cybersecurity laboratories as pedagogical tools. Understanding the potential issues and limiting factors is of benefit to researchers, laboratory designers, and managers, as well as to higher education institutions hosting such laboratories. To this end, this study analyzed 11 years of academic literature for themes of limiting factors related to system utilization.Analysis of the academic literature detected a reoccurring presence of system utilization issues as limiting factors within both hardware-based laboratories as well as virtualized laboratories. Furthermore, findings indicated that despite various attempts to resolve such utilization issues, the literature has yet to definitively do so. Concurrently, this study developed a taxonomy to conceptualize the evolution of, and relationships between, such literature.The full taxonomy is constructed over the course of seven diagrams and demonstrates the evolution of both the utilization issues documented in the literature as well as potential solutions. The diagrams incorporate successive groupings of literature into six tiers which are arranged according to the emergent themes. According to each emergent theme (e.g., transitioning from hardware-based laboratories to virtualized laboratories and associated, residual utilization issues), connections within the tier as well as external to the tier (forwards and backwards) are established.Ultimately, despite the success and effectiveness of cybersecurity laboratories, challenges related to system resource utilization continue to plague educators. What is more, no singular laboratory infrastructure design presents a model to address the system resource challenges. Thus, a need exists to create a cybersecurity laboratory design thatMaterial published as part of this publication, either on-line or in print, is copyrighted by the Informing Science Institute. Permission to make digital or paper copy of part or all of these works for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that the copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage AND that copies 1) bear this notice in full and 2) give the full citation on the first page. It is permissible to abstract these works so long as credit ...

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