A Distributed Academic Cloud and Virtual Laboratories for Information Technology Education and Research

This paper describes the development of an Academic Cloud and hands-on virtual laboratories that run on this cloud. The system has been deployed by the University of South Carolina, Stanly Community College, and the Network Development Group. The Academic Cloud provides remote-access capability to laboratory equipment via the Internet and seamlessly pools and shares resources (CPU, memory, storage) from four data centers. The data centers are located in South Carolina, North Carolina, Illinois, and Idaho. The virtual laboratories are disseminated via workshops that are organized by the project team. In one year, the Academic Cloud has served over 100,000 learners. Based on input from workshops’ participants who used the platform, the quality of the Academic Cloud and virtual laboratories have exceeded initial expectation.