Exploring virtual environments in a decentralized lab

Virtualization technology has been used in a decentralized manner to deliver hands-on labs in an intrusion detection course in the past three years. The availability of free virtualization software and low-cost but high-performance personal computers made it possible for students to run virtual machines and perform lab exercises on their own computers. Different virtualization options including VMware, Sun xVM VirtualBox and Virtual Computing Lab (VCL) were explored. Both VMware and VirtualBox were proven to be effective tools for lab purposes. The decentralized virtual lab approach and the centralized remote lab approach (ex. VCL) can be complementary.