This thread is to track recent platform/product updates and enhancements. I will update this main post when we perform platform updates (usually semi-monthly), most recent update first.

Scott

Scott McBrien
Principal Product Manager, Red Hat Online Training
Red Hat Certified Architect, Level VI (100-000-264)

Online Platform release February 28, 2018 [Xemnu the Titan]:

* Addition of downloadable PDF manuals to Online Training modality classes (with limits)

There is now a Download Student Guide PDF button available from the Online Training modality courses. Customers are limited to one course PDF download per day, no more than 10 course downloads per year.

* Refinement of Lab Controls

We added an obscuration envelope to the individual machine controls while the lab environment is starting or stopping. This should resolve some issues we've seen where the environments were sent conflicting commands by customers.

* Addition of new labs region

We're now offering geo-colocated labs from a Mumbai location for customers located in India.

Online Platform release February 1, 2018 [Vixen]:

* Updated loading states to no longer obscure top-level lab controls and i -info icon

Now Delete Lab and other global lab controls and information is available during the lab provisioning or boot process.

* Send API call during each polling interval.

Now, during each polling interval to determine machine states, an additional API call is made. This should aid in slightly faster transition states for machines undergoing boot, shutdown, or reset operations.

* Backend API released to support REDACTED

We're working on something new, and some non-user visible code went into place to support this feature. Though we will confirm nor deny nothing.

Online Platform release January 18, 2018 [Ulysses Archer]:

* Login page now using updated UI framework

We moved our login page to a newer UI framework. While functionality of the page has not changed, it will provide additional future flexibility for login page content as well as the ability to do better error messaging and the like.

* Lab Controls now using updated UI framework

Lab Machine controls were re-implemented in a newer UI framework. This change should be invisible to users as we kept the same theming and other items.

* Minor updates to lab control behavior

An obscure now 'greys out' machine functionality during machine operations like startup, shutdown, and resets. We updated the timer to be incremented in hours only, as by the whole hour is how the time is consumed by our platform/cloud provider. A visually different timer used for the machine countdown timer.

* Updated timer information for Virtual Training offering

Machine timers are set differently for Virtual Training classes, but we had some legacy timer stuff in there that was incorrectly resetting the runtime on labs to something other than the Virtual Training default.

* Multiple-lab state selector

This feature is to support an upcoming course requirement that has different, disperate,
lab environments to use during the course. If the curriculum team uses this feature, it will be available in the lab controls, however, if it is not configured/needed, lab controls
will appear as normal.

* Lab hour consumption information in BETA

We added a beta feature which should appear on the lab controls page. This feature
will display the number of hours consumed on this class' labs. Let us know if it is not
reporting accurately. It is Beta. For RHLS-Basic customers, we added a BETA hours
consumed calculator to appear under the days remaining timer. RHLS-Standard uses
a different profile functionality, which is why the subscription-level consumption is
not reported there. (It's BETA, we are putting it in where we can easily do so.)

* New cloud region provider enabled

Courses are increasingly using virt-in-virt, we've added a new cloud provider to support
this usecase. RH318 (Red Hat Virtualization), DO380 (OpenShift Administration III) are
the courses configured to use this new region. Users should expect better virt-in-virt
performance for these labs, however, lab-start times for the lab machines are longer
than normal.

Notes: This update included a good bit of work that was completed on either
side of the holidays, and was our first update of the year.