The Hands-on playground is a space to explore cloud services in real, live practice environments. The playground contains cloud sandboxes, instant terminal, cloud servers, and AI sandboxes.
Important: The Hands-on playground is monitored for abuse and prohibited behavior and is for educational purposes only.
Accessing the playground
Note: Hands-on playground features are not available for free trial users.
To access the playground from Skills, go to your learner home page (opens in new tab) and click Hands-on Playground in the Hands-on Learning widget.
To access the playground from ACG, go to your dashboard (opens in new tab) and click Playground in the navigation menu.
Cloud sandboxes
Cloud sandboxes allow you to explore real cloud environments in AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud. See Cloud sandboxes: getting started to learn more about this feature.
Some plans also have access to custom sandboxes. See Custom sandboxes for learners and Custom sandboxes for admins for more information.
Instant terminal
Instant terminal allows you to connect via a Linux-based terminal interface instead of opening SSH ports on your machine. This feature doesn’t require any downloads or extensions to work, preserving network security.
See Instant terminal to learn more about this feature.
Cloud servers
With cloud servers, you can launch up to nine virtual machines. These servers are pre-configured, saving you time and lowering the risk of missing packages.
See Cloud servers: getting started for details.
AI sandboxes
AI sandboxes are hands-on experiences where you can explore AI tools, services, and solutions in pre-configured and controlled environments. We offer three AI sandboxes: Prompt sandbox, AI cloud sandboxes, and SageMaker Studio Notebook.
See AI sandboxes for more information about this feature.
Common questions
Are there restrictions to what you can do in the Hands-on playground?
There are restrictions to what actions you can take and services you can use in our lab and playground environments. Consult the restrictions and supported services listed in our AWS, Azure, and GCP sandbox articles, and learn more about playground abuse or misuse.
What happens to data in the Hands-on playground?
Whether you delete a hands-on environment or it shuts down automatically, the data is deleted as well. Environments shut down automatically in the following timeframes:
- Cloud servers: Shut down after four hours and fully deleted after 14 days of non-usage
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Sandboxes: Four hours
Note: Individual learners are limited to four-hour sessions in sandboxes, but learners on business plans have the option to extend their session by four additional hours.
- Hands on Labs: Under four hours (varies by lab)
Our Support teams have full access to data in the Hands-on playground, and they only use it to troubleshoot issues and flag account abuse.