Creating Completely Distributed Cybersecurity Learning … Goodbye Cloud, Hello Kubernetes

We are building the next generation of cybersecurity training at Edinburgh Napier. Previously we created vSoC, and it has been used to support thousands of students, and on many modules that run across the world.

For this we create different networks and then run scripts to create the infrastructure and virtual machines for each student and each model. This is a heavy weight system where we have a VM for each server and host. It runs off VMWare ESX, and it has served us well. We create the learning infrastructure, once, for the whole year, and then let it run. But our new environment will be truly distributed, and where we can concentrate on getting the learning infrastructure orchestrated, and then customised for each lab, and, for each student. Each lab, for each student, will then run fresh and newly created.

And so when Microsoft jump on the open-source trial, you know that something fundamentally is changing. For two long we have been roped into systems which locked in the vertical and horizontal stacks. That’s the way the industry generally liked it, and most companies who were in the stack were happy that they fitted in with others. We have build large and complex server infrastructures which are verbose, and still rely on complex infrastructures of process and…