We value hands-on learning, which is why we offer real cloud environments in our hands-on playground and labs. We closely monitor resource usage in our playground and labs to ensure that learners only use these tools for educational purposes and aren’t using any more resources than are necessary to learn.
Tip: To ensure compliance with our Terms of Use (opens in new tab), reference our articles on supported AWS, Azure, and GCP services and restrictions in the hands-on playground and labs.
If we detect usage that’s outside the norm, here’s what to expect:
| Abuse/misuse event | Consequence | Notification |
|---|---|---|
| A learner intentionally abuses the playground or lab by using it for non-educational purposes, such as crypto mining. | The learner’s lab or playground is shut down and the environment is deleted. | Learners are notified of the abuse via email and an in-app notification. Plan admins are notified via email. |
| A learner unintentionally misuses the playground or lab by infringing on acceptable use, such as selecting too large of an EC2 instance that uses excessive resources. | The learner’s lab or playground is shut down and the environment is deleted. | Learners are notified of the misuse via email and an in-app notification. Plan admins are notified via email. |
| A learner continues to abuse or misuse hands-on features after their first offense. | The learner may be temporarily blocked from accessing hands-on features. Depending on the offense, they could be permanently banned from the platform. |
When temporarily blocked from hands-on features, learners are notified via email and an in-app notification, and plan admins are notified via email. Note: If a learner continues to unintentionally misuse hands-on features, our Support team may advise on what activity they should discontinue. In the event a learner’s account is terminated, our Support or Customer Success team contacts the plan admins. |
Hands-on playground abuse
We actively monitor the Hands-on playground for abusive, prohibited, or otherwise unacceptable behavior that goes against the educational purpose of these tools. Abuse of the Hands-on playground is enforced by our Hands-on playground and labs abuse protocol to ensure compliance with the Terms of Use (opens in new tab) you agreed to at sign-up.
To avoid workarounds, we don’t provide specifics of what we look for to identify abuse or how we identify it, but a few general examples of misuse and abuse are listed below:
- Incorrect instance type
- Ten or more instances created at a time
- Ten or more vCPU across all instances
- Attempting to use resources for crypto mining
- Excessive network traffic
- DDoS or port scanning external hosts
- Exceeding the maximum of four ECS tasks
This list is not comprehensive, so if you have questions, requests, or want to check whether an activity is allowed in the sandbox, contact Support prior to starting the activity.
Learn, have fun, and please respect the playground.