On the Use of Cloud Technologies to Provide Remote Laboratories as a Service

Cloud computing is a new paradigm that provides many features with regard to the efficient management of computing infrastructures. Thanks to it, scalable computing infrastructures can be developed, and lower power consumption can be achieved this being called green computing. Distance education is a solution to the constant necessities of knowledge our society requires. In order to acquire practical competences in engineering education, the use of remote laboratories becomes a necessity more than just an option in the case of distance learning. RELATED framework has been developed to permit structured development of remote laboratories. It presents a structured methodology of remote/virtual labs development and also provides common facilities as user management, booking, or basic visualization. In the case that a high number of laboratories and students use RELATED, handling such amount of information becomes a major issue for the proper functionality of RELATED. This paper proposes the use of cloud technologies to enhance RELATED and to tackle these issues, and describes the cloudbased architecture under development at UNED. Keywords-virtual remote laboratories; cloud; scalability;