Overview
What is a Shared Environment?
Note: Resources in Shared Environments can only use the CloudShare Cloud (not the public cloud) and only on Accelerate.CloudShare’s Shared Environment feature enables 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.
Shared Environments are accessible to users in addition to each user’s personal (My) environment.
Shared Environments support collaborative training, multi-user exercises, troubleshooting sessions, and more. Typical Shared Environment use case scenarios include:
- IT training: Enabling multiple users to access a shared SharePoint or Active Directory server, gain visibility into the same system, and perform configuration tasks. This shared setup not only improves learning outcomes but also mirrors the interconnected nature of real enterprise systems.
- Cyber Training: Enabling multiple users to access the same environment and VMs to perform attacks, apply protections, and observe the results together. Attack-and-defense exercises enable the simulation of a real incident, all within a safe, monitored space. These types of interactions are well-suited to cybersecurity range exercises (such as Red Team vs. Blue Team), where the instructor is primarily responsible for real-time assistance and skill monitoring while separate groups of participants engage with one another.
- Demos and Sales: Enabling multiple users to use a product, while others watch, learn and try it themselves in the same Shared Environment.
Getting Started with Shared Environments
To start working with a Shared Environment:
- Define a blueprint for a Shared Environment and attach it to the main blueprint, as described in Creating a Shared Environment.
- Create an experience that uses the blueprint that contains the Shared Environment, as described in Creating Training Experiences with a Shared Environment.
Two Kinds of Shared Environments
CloudShare supports two kinds of Shared Environments:
– AND –
The procedure for creating either of these environments is the same. The difference lies in how they are configured when their blueprint is selected during experience creation, and, consequently, in how they appear and operate in the user interfaces of the Participant Viewer and the Instructor Console.
Shared Environments with View Access
This type of Shared Environment enables multiple participants and instructors to be in the same Shared Environment at the same time, with an instructor or designated participant controlling it (performing actions) and the others watching. It provides participants with Participant Viewer functionality, such as collaboration tools, Zoom In and so on, while they are all in the same environment at the same time. This enables a Controller to control a VM (perform actions) while other participants in the session watch.
In the Participant Viewer, when a session has a Shared Environment, the participants see two tabs at the top-left: My Environment and Shared Environment.
- The My Environment tab provides access to the participant's personal environment (and all its VMs) and the full range of Participant Viewer tools as usual.
- The Shared Environment tab provides access to the VMs shared with other participants and instructors in the session, as well as collaboration tools, Zoom In, and more.
See Shared Environments: Participant Viewer for more information.
Shared Environment with Network Access Only
This type of Shared Environment only provides participants and instructors with network access to the VMs of the Shared Environment. For example, using CLI commands and RDP sessions. It does not provide a shared Viewer-based live view of the environment. This approach is useful for IT and cyber training scenarios in which participants need access to shared resources, such as a server, database, or directory service, but do not need to view the same screen in real time.
In the Participant Viewer, participants see a tab for each of their VMs, meaning of the VMs in their personal environment, but not of the Shared Environment’s VMs. For example, as shown below:
Note: Only a single participant or instructor can access a VM in a Shared Environment at a time. This means that multiple participants can each work on this VM in their own environment, but not simultaneously.
Access to the VMs in the Shared Environment is provided in the VM List, as shown below:
Participants see two sections in the VM List:
- The upper section lists the VMs in the participant’s environment and provides available actions for each VM.
- The lower section, named Shared Environment, lists the VMs of the Shared Environment. These are available automatically once the session begins, with no action required from the instructor.
This enables participants to identify shared VMs and access them from their own environments over the network.
Who Can Control a Shared Environment?
By default, the instructor who created an experience controls the activity in the Shared Environment, while everyone else in the experience watches. This user is called the Controller.
Anyone with Instructor Console access can assign someone as a Controller, including themselves, by clicking the Shared by button in the Instructor Console, as described in Shared Environments: Instructor Console.
Anyone (instructor or participant) who is currently logged into the session can be assigned as a Controller.
Note: A user must be logged into the session to be assigned as a Controller; being registered for the session (but not present) is not enough.
A Controller can perform activities in the Shared Environment from their own personal environment, meaning from their My Environments tab.
IMPORTANT: Granting Controller permission to another instructor or participant does not revoke the Host's ability to interact with the VM. The Host can still perform actions, so both the Host and the Controller can control the same session simultaneously. See What is a Host? for more information.
Notes:
- 24 Hour Control Permission Expiration: Controller permission for a Shared Environment is granted for 24 hours only. After that, it reverts to the Host.
- Control Permission Removal: Controller permission is automatically revoked when a participant or instructor is removed from the session and returned to the Host. It is also removed from someone who is not the Host when Controller permission is assigned to another participant or instructor.
- Shared Environment Policy Recommendation: For Shared Environments, it is recommended that the policy be set to Always On, meaning it remains active and doesn’t get suspended or expire.
Shared Environments: Instructor Console
IMPORTANT: Shared Environment VMs are connected automatically when a session begins. No manual action is required from the instructor or any participant to establish the connection.
Which Participant is in a Shared Environment?
As always, the center of the Instructor Console displays a thumbnail for each participant in the session, giving the instructor a real-time view of what each participant sees in their Participant Viewer.
At any given moment, each participant may be viewing either the My Environment tab (the participant’s personal environment) or the Shared Environment tab in their Participant Viewer.
A Shared Environment label appears in the Instructors Console above a live thumbnail when that participant is actually viewing a VM in the Shared Environment tab, as shown below:
What Can an Instructor Do while Controlling a Shared Environment?
In the Instructor Console, the instructor is typically the default Controller and has access to the full range of Participant Viewer features and tools, as shown below:
Accessing the VMs of a Shared Environment
In the Instructor Console, an instructor can access the VMs of a Shared Environment by clicking the Shared Environment button, as shown below:
A list of the VMs of the Shared Environment is displayed.
Enables the instructor to access the environment and provides the Participant Viewer features, as shown below:
Shared Environment VMs use the CON protocol exclusively. This is the only protocol available for accessing VMs within a Shared Environment.
Who is the Controller? – Controlling the Shared Environment
The instructor who creates the experience is, by default, defined as the Controller of the Shared Environment for that session.
Only a single participant or instructor user can be a Controller of a Shared Environment at a time, with one exception described below. That user can actively work in the Shared Environment, while other participants watch the activity in real time.
IMPORTANT: If a user is a Host, then granting Controller permission to another user does not remove the Host's ability to interact with the VM. The Host can still perform actions, so both users may be able to control the same session simultaneously.
The name of the current Controller appears in the Controlled By field in the Shared Environment area of the Instructor Console, as shown below:
To assign a different user as the Controller:
- In the Controlled By field, click the name of the current Controller, as shown above.
- From the dropdown list, select an instructor, participant or project member to take control of the Shared Environment.
Control is then transferred to the selected user, and all other users can watch the Shared Environment in real time in the Participant Viewer or Instructor Console.
Note: User-hour consumption is the same as in any other running environment, and usage is logged for the instructor.
Note: It may take a few minutes to create the network and connect it. It will only be seen in the Viewer after it has been created.
Note: Each participant thumbnail in the Instructor Console shows the participant’s current activity. The Zoom In options are unavailable while that participant is viewing or controlling the Shared Environment. If the participant switches to the Shared Environment while the Controller is zoomed in on that participant, a message is displayed indicating that the action is unavailable. For example, as shown below:
Shared Environments: Participant Viewer
Overview
If a Shared Environment is defined in the experience blueprint, the Participant Viewer shows two tabs at the top-left: My Environment and Shared Environment.
The Shared Environment tab provides access to the environment shared with the other participants and instructors in the session, including its VMs.
Note: The Shared Environment tab appears only if an instructor has defined a Shared Environment for the session. After the instructor creates the Shared Environment, it may take a few minutes for it to appear in the Participant Viewer. If the Shared Environment is suspended, it is not visible or accessible.
The My Environment tab provides access to the participant's personal environment and the full range of Participant Viewer tools as usual, as shown below:
Who is Controlling the Session?
The Shared Environment is typically controlled by a single participant or instructor at a time, referred to as the Controller. The name of the current Controller appears at the top right, so that the participant can always see who is currently controlling the Shared Environment, as shown below:
If you are the Controller, a green Controlled by you label appears in the top-right corner, as shown below:
IMPORTANT: In most cases, only one user is identified as the Controller. However, if a user is the Host, granting Controller permission to another user does not remove the Host’s ability to interact with the VM. In this case, both the Host and the assigned Controller may be able to control the same session simultaneously.
Controller Location Indicator
To make it easier for participants to follow the Controller, an indicator appears on the VM tab that the Controller is currently viewing in the Shared Environment, as shown below:
If the Controller moves to a different VM within the Shared Environment tab, the indicator moves with them.
The indicator appears only while the Controller is in the Shared Environment tab. If the Controller switches to their personal My Environment tab, the indicator disappears. If the Controller returns to the Shared Environment tab while still holding Controller permission, the indicator reappears.
If Controller permission is revoked, the indicator disappears. If Controller permission is assigned to a different participant, the indicator appears on the VM currently being viewed by that current Controller.
What Can a Participant Do in a Shared Environment?
If the Participant is a Viewer
If the participant is not a Controller, they can only watch what the Controller does in the Participant Viewer. The participant can switch between VM tabs to look at each VM and use the Participant Viewer’s collaboration tools.
If the Participant is the Controller
If the participant is the Controller, they can select the relevant VM in the Shared Environment from its VM tab or from the VM List and work in that VM while everyone else watches. The Participant Viewer collaboration tools are also available, as shown below:
Accessing VMs in a Shared Environment
Accessing VMs from the VM Tabs
After an instructor creates a Shared Environment, participants can access the VMs in that environment in the Participant Viewer.
After selecting the Shared Environment tab at the top of the Participant Viewer, a tab appears across the top of the Participant Viewer for each VM, just like in the participant’s personal My Environment tab, as shown below:
Clicking on a VM tab displays the VM’s view.
If the Participant is a Controller, they can perform actions in the VM. Otherwise, they can only view the Controller's activities.
Accessing VMs from the VM List
A VM List may appear as a tab at the top of the Participant Viewer or as an option in the side menu, as defined by the instructor in the Experience Editor.
After an instructor has created a Shared Environment, participants can access the shared VMs in the VMs List of the Participant Viewer.
The VM List displays all VMs available within the Experience, including those in a Shared Environment, as shown below:
In this example screen above, the first two VMs are in the participant’s personal environment, and the last three are in the Shared Environment.
Shared Environment Connection
When a session that includes a Shared Environment begins, the connection between participants and the Shared Environment VMs is established automatically. No manual action is required from the instructor, main instructor, or any participant.
Participants can access and use the Shared Environment VMs independently, without any dependency on the instructor being present or performing any setup steps.
Creating a Shared Environment
Note: Resources in Shared Environments can only use the CloudShare Cloud (not the public cloud) and only on Accelerate.
Shared Environments enable instructors and participants to control and/or view an environment (and all its VMs) shared with other participants, in addition to their own personal environment, within an experience. They can even be in the same environment at the same time, with one of them controlling it and the others watching.
You may refer to What is a Shared Environment and Who Can Access a Shared Environment for more information.
Shared Resources Network
Participants’ access to the Shared Environments and resources is network-based. This network is created by attaching blueprints to each other. For additional information, see Editing Networks.
Note: Participants are separate, each existing within their own VLAN.
Follow these guidelines when setting up the shared resources network:
- Shared and participant blueprints should both be provisioned in the same CloudShare region. This refers to the blueprint default snapshot.
- The shared and participant blueprints must not use overlapping network ranges. In other words, they must use different 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 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, or resources, have their own policy, which may differ from the participants' environment policy. For self-paced training and Shared Environments, it is recommended that the Shared Environment’s policy be set to Always On, meaning it remains active and is not suspended or allowed to expire.
Creating a Shared Blueprint
To enable experiences to benefit from Shared Environments and resources, you must first create a blueprint containing the VMs that will be in a Shared Environment. This environment should contain VMs that all participants and instructors can view simultaneously, with one controlling the activity while the others watch.
To make this blueprint shareable, it must be attached to the main blueprint (the blueprint used to create the experience). In this way, you are associating them with one another, thus creating a network.
Later, when creating an experience, this shareable blueprint is available to select as part of the experience.
To attach a blueprint to the participant blueprint as a Shared Environment or resource:
Go to the Blueprint Details page of the main blueprint to be used to create the experience. For example, as shown below:
To the right of the Allow Shared Blueprints field, click + Add Blueprint, as shown above.
You can select up to five blueprints. This attaches the selected blueprints to the personal participant’s blueprint being edited in this window, thus adding them to the blueprint’s Shared Resources Network.
Note: These blueprints will then be available for selection as a Shared Environment in the Shared Blueprint (optional) field (shown below) when an experience is created using this part blueprint.
Note: The Linked As Shared Blueprint field is for information only. It lists the blueprints to which the blueprints in the Allow Shared Blueprints field are attached.
After selecting a blueprint, CloudShare verifies that:
At least one region of the shared blueprint default snapshot matches the participant's blueprint region.
The shared blueprint default snapshot has a different network than the participant network.
If these conditions are not verified, an error is displayed stating that shared blueprints should have at least one matching region and must be on different networks.
The Add Shared Blueprint screen is displayed, as shown below:
The Blueprint dropdown menu only offers valid blueprint candidates based on region and project compatibility.
Note: To update or edit a shared blueprint, click the relevant shared blueprint on the Blueprint Details page.
Creating a New Experience that Has a Shared Environment
Every Experience is based on a blueprint, which must be selected in the Blueprints field, as shown below:
A Shared Blueprint (optional) field appears (shown below) in the New Training Experience window (shown below), when the blueprint selected in the Blueprints field (described in step 1 above) had one or more shared blueprints attached to it by selecting them in the Allow Shared Blueprints field as described in the Creating a Shared Blueprint section.
Note: If multiple blueprints are selected in the Blueprints field (shown above), for example for multi-step experiences, the Shared Blueprint (optional) field 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 Resources 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 appears in the Environment Details screen, next to the Shared Blueprint field.
Creating Training Experiences with a Shared Environment
Using CloudShare's training and sales experiences, you can deliver learning or sales enablement environments to multiple participants, either simultaneously or ad hoc. Using a previously created blueprint containing the initial environment state, you can schedule the experience, invite participants, and deliver the environments automatically.
In this section, we will cover:
- Training Experiences. Learn how to create, edit, and manage training experiences.
- Sales Experiences. Learn how to create, edit, and manage sales experiences.
To create a training experience, click Training in the home screen left-side menu, and then click the + Create New button at the top right of the screen. Alternatively, hover over Training in the left-side menu and click the + icon.
Building your training experience can be accomplished in three steps.
Step 1: General
- Name: Enter a unique name for your experience.
- Type: Choose between instructor-led or self-paced training.
- Project: Select the project your experience is in.
- Blueprints: Select one or more blueprints for your experience, determining the environments your instructors and participants will use.
- Regions: Choose one or more regions where the cloud resources will be located. Your blueprint’s snapshot must be copied to more than one region to select multiple regions. Go to the infrastructure area to copy your snapshot to additional regions.
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Shared Blueprint (optional): Choose one of the shared Blueprints to enable the session participants and instructors to have access to a Shared Environment in addition to their own personal environment. See Shared Environments for a description of what a Shared Environment is.
- Note: This field only appears if the blueprint selected in the Blueprints field (described above) was defined with one or more shared blueprints attached to it by selecting them in the Allow Shared Blueprints field as described in the Creating a Shared Blueprint section. Only the blueprints that were associated with the blueprint specified in the Blueprints fields (described above) are offered for selection in the dropdown menu.
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Shared Environments with View Access:
- Toggle this option ON (the default) to specify that participants and instructors have CloudShare Participant Viewer and Instructor Console functionality and can view and collaborate in the same environment at the same time. See for Shared Environments with View Access for a full description of this option.
- Toggle this option OFF to specify that participants and instructors only have network access to the VMs of this Shared Environment, such as using CLI commands and RDP sessions. Only a single participant or instructor can access a VM in a Shared Environment when this option is toggled OFF. This means that multiple users can each work on this VM in their own environment, but not at the same time. See for Shared Environments with Network Access Only for a full description of this option.
- Main Instructor: Assign the main instructor for the experience.
- Additional Instructors (Optional): Add any additional instructors.
Click Show Advanced Fields to add:
- Description (optional): Add a description that will only be visible to instructors and admins with access to the experience.
- Labels (Optional): Add labels to your experience for easy identification and categorization.
- External ID (optional): Add an external ID to easily match your experience with external tools (i.e., CRM, marketing tools, etc.).
- Allow more than one environment activation per student: This option allows participants to access more than one environment sequentially (i.e., with this option enabled, when a participant's current environment expires due to the policy, when they log in again, they receive a new environment. If the option is disabled, they will be denied access to the experience.
Note: Creating an Instructor-Led training experience within five hours of its scheduled start time could affect the instant availability of environments to all participants at the beginning of the session. Step 2: Time
Enter the start date and time, time zone, and end date and time (optional). Select the appropriate time zone. This ensures accurate scheduling and a smooth learning experience for all participants.
The option of not specifying an end time for experiences creates always-available learning opportunities, eliminating the need for frequent end-date updates (often used for long-running self-paced classes). This ensures a seamless and continuous learning environment.
Step 3: Access
- Policy: Select the environment policy for the experience. A policy is a set of rules defining various parameters and behaviors for virtual environments. It allows you to manage costs such as limiting how long environments live or an inactivity timeout before they automatically suspend.
- Maximum Number of Students: Enter the maximum number of students who can join your experience. In a self-paced experience, the default number of students is set to Unlimited, and you can optionally set the Maximum number of concurrent students.
- Registration Type: Choose the registration type: Any Students or Registered Students Only. Registered Students Only means only students added to the list by an admin or instructor can access the experience. Any Students means that non-registered students (who were not added to the user's list by the admin or instructor and accessed the experience via another channel) are also allowed access to the experience. These students will be considered “self-registered” when they log in and automatically appear on the user list.
- Access Type: Set the access type as either Passphrase or Single-Sign-On (SSO). SSO is only available for subscriptions that have an SSO connection enabled.
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Access Time: Configure access time and early access settings. This can be set to either
- Allow access before training starts only to instructors
- Allow access before training starts to all participants
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Do not allow access before training starts
If you allow access before training begins, you can select when early access should begin; e.g., 30 minutes before the start time (the default). Note that if the instructor is allowed early access, they are not considered by the Early Access Time selection (this selection only applies to end users). The instructor's environment can be archived and/or deleted prior to - or during - the actual class, given that the class policy is assigned to the instructor's environment at creation time, and thus the runtime and storage lease allocations will likely be exhausted earlier than those of the end users. Instructors should change the policy assigned to their instructor environment accordingly. Instructors can also manually delete their instructor environment at any time, and create subsequent instructor environments when a prior environment has been deleted.
- Invitation Email: Select whether to customize invitation emails for students and instructors or send the default invitation. You can customize your invitation after creating the experience via the Details → Access tab of the experience page.
Click Show Advanced Fields to access additional options:
- Don't send invitations to students
- Don't send invitations to instructors
- Block students using free email domains
- Block specific email domains
- Instructions for setting up an LTI integration are also included. LTI allows data to be exchanged between your CloudShare experience and your course within an LMS. Once the experience has been created, LTI must be configured in the Details → Access tab of the experience page.
Click Create to add your new experience. A pop-up will then inform you that your experience has successfully been created, and you will be taken to the experience’s page.
Note: Creating an experience within five hours before the scheduled start time may impact the immediate availability of the experience for all students at the start time.LMS Integration
CloudShare's Learning Management System (LMS) integration provides a seamless user experience for participants, allowing them to access CloudShare's hands-on training environments directly from your LMS courses.
For additional information, see Integrating CloudShare with LMS.