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Labs Introduction — IT Infrastructure & DevOps

Welcome to the lab environment of this course.

Labs are the core of your learning journey: theory builds concepts, but labs build skills and confidence.

In this course, you will not just complete exercises — you will act as employees in a simulated tech company called TechOps Inc.

You’ll work in teams of 8~10 (your own mini-company), but every student is required to complete all labs individually to master the skills.

🎭 Scenario Narrative

You have been hired into TechOps Inc. as part of the Platform & DevOps Division.
TechOps Inc. provides IT infrastructure, cloud, and DevOps solutions to clients.

Your mission:
- Individually: Build your skills by completing every lab yourself.
- As a company (team): Integrate individual work into checkpoint deliverables and, eventually, a final enterprise-ready environment.

Think of it like this:

  • Individual labs = employee training & proof-of-skill.
  • Team checkpoints = project milestones delivered to management.

🧑‍🤝‍🧑 Team Composition

Each team = one subsidiary company of TechOps Inc. (10 members each).

Roles give special focus during integration, but every student must do all labs individually.

Suggested roles:

  • Project Lead (Scrum Master) — manages Taiga board, sprint planning.
  • Cloud Architect — AWS infra (VPC, EC2, storage).
  • System Administrator — VM setup, baseline OS, security hardening.
  • DevOps Engineers (2x) — CI/CD pipelines, IaC automation.
  • Developers (2x) — containerize apps, basic testing.
  • Security Engineer — IAM, secrets, compliance.
  • Monitoring Specialist — Prometheus, Grafana dashboards.
  • Storage/Network Engineer — NAS, SAN, networking integration.

Note

Everyone completes all labs individually.
Roles matter only when your company integrates deliverables at checkpoints.

🛠️ Lab Workflow

Preparation:

  • Read the session guide before class.
  • Install or update tools (VirtualBox, Docker, AWS CLI, etc.).

Execution

  • Follow the lab guide.
  • Document steps, configs, and troubleshooting.

Documentation

  • Maintain an individual lab notebook (Markdown/Google Doc).
  • Capture objectives, steps, screenshots, outputs, and reflections.

Integration (Team)

  • At checkpoints, the company integrates work into a unified deliverable.
  • Example: Everyone builds a SAN individually → team Storage/Network Engineer ensures the company SAN integrates across all VMs.

📊 Checkpoints & Milestones

Labs are grouped into phases, with checkpoints at the end:

  1. Checkpoint 1 (Session 9): Infra Blueprint — baseline VMs, data center design, NAS, SAN.
  2. Checkpoint 2 (Session 13): Hybrid Infra — VM cluster + AWS VPC + storage integration.
  3. Checkpoint 3 (Session 17): CI/CD-ready Infra — Docker app + Kubernetes + IaC.
  4. Checkpoint 4 (Session 20): Ops Dashboard — CI/CD + monitoring.
  5. Final Demo (Session 23): Enterprise-ready infra — integrated, secure, and highly available.

📝 Lab Notebook Example

Session 6: IT Infrastructure Overview
- Objective: Create baseline Ubuntu VM with snapshot.
- Steps: 1. Download Ubuntu LTS ISO.
2. Create VM (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB disk).
3. Installed updates + curl, git, ssh.
4. Created snapshot baseline-v1.
- Output: - Screenshot of VirtualBox VM summary.
- Config file: /etc/os-release.
- Reflection: - First attempt failed due to missing ISO → fixed by verifying checksum.

🏆 Evaluation

  • Individual labs: checked via notebooks, spot checks, and lab exam.
  • Team checkpoints: graded as deliverables, demoed in class.
  • Final demo: team integration of all skills.

✅ Key Takeaways

  • You are now employees of TechOps Inc.
  • You’ll work in teams of 10 (subsidiary companies).
  • Every student must complete every lab individually.
  • Roles = focus during integration, not excuses to skip labs.
  • Labs build progressively toward checkpoint milestones and the final demo.