Building the Infrastructure Piscine
How can we train system administrators without exposing them to a real-world infrastructure? It was to answer this question that 42 Lausanne created the Infrastructure Pool, a three-week immersive programme that enables students who have completed the core curriculum to build, configure and operate a complete infrastructure using professional-grade equipment.
A real-life challenge
For three weeks on a full-time basis, four students take on the challenge of the Infra Lab in a room entirely dedicated to the project and equipped with a network isolated from the school’s.
On the first day, they find an empty rack, servers that are switched off, and cables. Nothing is installed, nothing is configured.
They have at their disposal professional-grade equipment similar to that used in many companies: two HP ProLiant servers, two Cisco switches (Level 2 and 3), a firewall and a shared storage NAS.
In just twenty-one days, they must transform this set of equipment into a fully operational, virtualised, secure, automated, backed-up and monitored infrastructure.
Building infrastructure from scratch
The Infrastructure Lab simulates the various stages of a real-world business project.Participants begin by taking stock of the hardware, mounting the servers in racks, carrying out the cabling and setting up remote access. Before connecting the equipment, they design the entire network architecture: addressing plan, VLANs, routing and segmentation.
They then move on to implementation by configuring the switches, the firewall and the network services, before creating a virtualisation cluster capable of hosting several dozen virtual machines.
The project continues with the implementation of shared storage and backups, the full automation of deployment using Ansible, and then container orchestration with Kubernetes. Finally, the students install monitoring tools that enable them to monitor the infrastructure and receive alerts in the event of an incident.
As they progress, they also discover technologies widely used in business, such as Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, Citrix, Azure and Linux environments.
In just 21 days
On the first day, the students are presented with an empty rack, switched-off servers and cables. By the twenty-first day, they are running a fully-fledged, virtualised, automated, backed-up and monitored infrastructure, incorporating services such as Active Directory, LDAP, Kerberos, Azure, Citrix and Kubernetes.
Beyond the technical exercise, the Infrastructure Lab replicates the various stages of a real-world business project. Students learn to collaborate, document their choices, resolve incidents and make technical decisions as a team – essential skills for careers in system administration, cloud computing, DevOps and cybersecurity.
Piscine Infra: meeting the needs of businesses
Infrastructure roles cannot be learnt solely by watching tutorials. They require hands-on experience with hardware and an understanding of the links between the various components of a system, within an environment where everything is interconnected.
This programme enables companies to meet candidates who not only have a firm grasp of the technologies, but who have also demonstrated their ability to design, build, develop and maintain infrastructure as part of a team, in a setting closely resembling that which they will encounter in the workplace.
42 Lausanne works regularly with companies interested in recruiting students trained in system administration, adapting the course content each year in collaboration with these companies.