Authors:
Christian Neuhaus
1
;
Frank Feinbube
1
;
Andreas Polze
1
and
Arkady Retik
2
Affiliations:
1
University of Potsdam, Germany
;
2
Microsoft Corporation, United States
Keyword(s):
Massive Open Online Courses, Online Experimentation Platform, Software Engineering, Operating Systems, InstantLab, Windows.
Related
Ontology
Subjects/Areas/Topics:
Cloud-Based Learning and Assessment
;
Computer-Supported Education
;
Distance Education
;
e-Learning
;
e-Learning Platforms
;
Information Technologies Supporting Learning
;
Simulation and Modeling
;
Simulation Tools and Platforms
;
Technology Enhanced Learning
;
Ubiquitous Learning
;
Web-Based Learning, Wikis and Blogs
Abstract:
InstantLab is our online experimentation platform that is used for hosting exercises and experiments for operating systems and software engineering courses at HPI. In this paper, we discuss challenges and solutions for scaling InstantLab to provide experiment infrastructure for thousands of users in MOOC scenarios. We
present InstantLabs XCloud architecture - a combination of a privat cloud resources at HPI combined with public cloud infrastructures via ``cloudbursting''. This way, we can provide specialized experiments using VM co-location and heterogeneous compute devices (such as GPGPU) that are not possible on public cloud infrastructures. Additionally, we discuss challenges and solutions dealing with embedding of special hardware, providing experiment feedback and managing access control. We propose trust-based access control as a way to handle resource management in MOOC settings.