Towards cyber-physical system technologies over Apache VCL

The paper presents an extension of the Apache virtual computing lab (VCL) facilitating the education of cloud technologies and cyber-physical systems (CPSs). On the one hand, a 'cloud on cloud' solution serves as a teaching platform for IT professionals and cloud application designers. On the other hand, introducing remote access to physical devices as part of virtual lab sessions conducted through VCL supports CPS education. CPS-enabled academic clouds and teaching CPS with academic clouds are both effectively uncharted territories from the didactic point of view - thus we also present an analysis of their potential from the aspect of learning facilitation.