Red Hat Learning Subscription: The Great Lab Migration Begins!

An article from the Red Hat Learning Subscription monthly newsletter. May 2016.

The first rule of production operations is: “We don’t talk about production operations.” The second rule of production operations is: “There can be only one thing!”  Wait, maybe I have those reversed.  In any event, currently there are two cloud based lab back-ends for courses within the subscription.  On May 16, 2016, we started to migrate older classes to use the newer lab back-end to reconcile that situation.

Many of you have probably experienced that when you have several different simultaneous back-end processes that your environment is more difficult to maintain and more prone to failure.  At least that has been my experience.  Right now in our Red Hat Online Training environment, we have two different cloud providers that each service a portion of the catalog.  On Monday, May 16, we started to fix that.

Over the next couple of months, we’ll be moving all the classes and enrollments that are based on our older lab environment to instead use the newer design.  The new design has several features:

• Console access to lab systems
• Unfiltered networking between machines
• Use of standard web ports (may help with those pesky corporate proxies and firewalls)
• Use of CA signed certificates (no more browser setting changes)
• Better international keyboard support
• Ability to copy/paste into systems

There are a number of things happening behind the scenes that will benefit users lab experience.  Easier maintenance of lab environments, a single set of lab controls, one set of cloud APIs to manage, etc.

Notification banners will be used to notify users of these enhancements. Some of you may have noticed the notification banner that launched in early May announcing the change on May 16.  We will be using these banners as a communication to you for any upcoming migrations as well.  Additionally, we will notify  users by e-mail two weeks in advance of the migration.

I hope you are as excited as I am to have only one way of doing things.  Coming soon to a lab environment near you! 

As always, the Red Hat Training and Certification team looks forward to providing even more great content, features, and UI improvements. Please continue to give us feedback on your experience with your Red Hat Learning Subscription.

Regards,
Scott McBrien
Technical program manager, Red Hat Learning Subscription
Red Hat, Inc.