Skillable provides lab templates that are categorized, labeled and tagged by topic area in a gallery format. A topic area, refreshingly, is exactly what it says it is—the topic area your lab is going to cover, address or focus on. A topic area defines the types of technical scenarios for which a lab template is best suited. Examples of topic areas include cybersecurity, coding/software development and system administration. All lab templates in our template gallery are categorized into at least one topic area and labelled accordingly. Some are tagged for more than one topic area.
Here’s the good news: Templates in a topic area contain all the necessary configurations and tools you’ll need to begin building content for the topic. The lab templates may save you considerable time by eliminating the need for you to perform rudimentary tasks, such as installing required software. You can expand capabilities by adding additional configurations or software.
The process really is as simple as accessing the template gallery when creating a new lab profile in Skillable Studio. From there, you filter, select and customize.
In addition to saving you time, lab templates that already contain the foundation for the lab you’re going to create based on its topic frees you up to think about what your lab needs to accomplish rather than the technical capabilities required for it to function. It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the enormous volume of capabilities provided by the Skillable platform. The templates and the topic-specific capabilities they already include are meant to enable you to skip ahead to identifying the best starting point.
To introduce you to the topic areas that are currently aligned with corresponding templates, please see below for a brief explanation of each topic. We’ll post follow up blogs that go into greater detail for each area. Please note that we do not currently have topic-focused lab templates available for each topic area and the topic areas may evolve over time.
- Coding/Software Development: Coding/Software Development templates are focused on working with programming languages, development tools and application development platforms. These templates will support scenarios that range from learning a new programming language to fully building, deploying and scaling applications in on-premises environments or in the cloud-using languages such as Python, JavaScript, C# and more.
- DevOps/Cloud Technologies: DevOps (also known as IT Ops) templates will provide tools that enable Infrastructure as Code as well as Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) scenarios. Cloud Technologies templates provide environments designed to work with public cloud providers (such as Amazon Web Services or Microsoft Azure) or other web applications.
- Data and Analytics: Data and Analytics templates (like this one for data science) provide an environment capable of database and big data manipulation and analysis.
- End User Productivity: End User Productivity templates provide a basic desktop operating system with minimal modifications from a default installation and may include additional general-purpose software such as word processors or spreadsheet software.
- Information/Cyber Security: Information and Cyber Security templates provide environments tailored for digital attack and defense. Information and Cyber Security templates will include a variety of mixed environments which include both Windows and Linux, including many environments with hacking or security-focused Linux distributions, such as Kali Linux.
- Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence: Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) templates provide tools needed to work with various components of artificial intelligence such as machine learning, computer vision and more.
- Network Administration: Network Administration templates provide an environment of interconnected systems. These connections may vary from Windows or Linux virtual machines, mixed Windows/Linux environments, public cloud networking and public cloud/on-premises hybrid networking utilizing VPN software or cloud-native VPN gateways.
- Systems Administration: Systems Administration templates provide environments based on enterprise infrastructure configurations. Systems Administration templates may contain Windows or Linux environments that contain server operating systems and software, connected server/client machines or hybrid on-premises and cloud environments.
- Database Administration: Database Administration templates will provide environments based on enterprise data architecture. Database Administration templates may contain on-premise or cloud-based databases and will be prepared for scenarios that may include installation, troubleshooting, data migration and/or backup/recovery.
