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[Beta] Creating and Managing Shared Resources 

Note: Shared resources are available for Accelerate on CloudShare’s cloud.

CloudShare’s shared resources allow multiple participants to access and interact within the same virtual environment (resources) over a common network.

By linking blueprints through a shared network, instructors and participants can facilitate collaborative scenarios and group-based learning activities.
Use cases include cyber simulations or collaborative access to shared resources.

Shared access for participants to the shared resources is network-based. Integrated remote access to shared VMs will be available in future releases.

Shared Resources Network

Note: Participants are separate, each existing within their own VLAN.

Follow these guidelines when setting the shared resources network:

  • Shared and participant blueprints should both be provisioned in the same CloudShare region (this refers to the blueprint’s default snapshot).
  • The shared and participant blueprints must not use overlapping network ranges (i.e., they must use differing networks).

By default, CloudShare creates new custom environments in the 10.160.0.0/16 network. If you are creating a blueprint to serve as the basis for the shared resources, consider whether this blueprint or the participant blueprint will use an alternative network.

CloudShare translates (using SNAT) the participants’ environment’s network addresses to a global and unique set of addresses as seen in the shared resources.

For additional information on changing a machine’s network, see Editing Networks.

Selecting a Policy for the Shared Resources

When creating or editing an experience with shared resources, it is important to specify the policy. 

Shared environments (resources) have their own policy - which may be different than the participants’ environment policy. For self-paced training for example, it is recommended to use an “always on” policy for shared environments (resources). 

Creating a Shared Blueprint

To enable shared resources, you will first need to create a shared blueprint in addition to a participant blueprint. You can then define the ‘allowed shared blueprints’ for the participant blueprint. When creating an experience, you will be able to select the specific blueprint to be used as the shared environment (resources) for the experience. 

  1. Go to the Blueprint Details Page of the participant blueprint.
  2. To the right of the Allow Shared Blueprints field, click + Add Blueprint. You can add up to five allowed shared blueprints.
  3. After selecting a blueprint, CloudShare verifies that:
    1. At least one of the regions of the shared blueprint (default snapshot) matches the participant blueprint region.
    2. The shared blueprint (default snapshot) has a different network than the participant network. 

If these are not verified, an error will be displayed saying that shared blueprints should have at least one matching region and be on different networks. 

  1. The Add Shared Blueprint screen appears. In the Blueprint drop-down, only valid blueprint candidates will be shown based on region and project compatibility. 

  1. To update/edit a shared blueprint, click the relevant shared blueprint on the Blueprint Details page. 

Creating an Experience with Shared Resources 

When creating a new experience:

  • The Shared Blueprint field is available if the selected participants' blueprint is defined with allowed shared blueprints.
  • If multiple blueprints are selected - for example for multi-step experiences - the Shared Blueprint option is disabled.

When creating or editing an experience with shared environments, it is important to specify the relevant policy (see the Selecting a Policy for the Shared Environment section above for additional information). 

Environment Details Page - Shared Blueprint Indication

Once a shared blueprint is linked and deployed as part of an experience, a “shared” indication will appear in the Environment Details screen, next to the Shared Blueprint field. 

Managing Shared Resources in the Instructor Console

In the Instructor Console, once instructors have created shared resources, they can view them during active classes via the Shared Environment tab. 
The shared environment is assigned to the main instructor. 

When the instructor has created and started the shared environment, participants will be able to access shared VMs via the network and view them in the VM list. If the environment is suspended, it will not be visible or accessible. 

User hour consumption is equivalent to any other running environment and the usage is logged for the instructor.

Note: It may take a few minutes to create the network and for it to be connected. It will only be seen in the Viewer after it has been created.

Viewing and Accessing Shared VMs in the Viewer

In the Viewer, shared VMs are displayed from the linked shared blueprint.

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