A toolchain for the in-house education of cloud computing in a vendor agnostic and efficient manner

Adoption of cloud computing has led to increased demand by industry for cloud-ready graduates and pressure on universities to include cloud in their curriculum. While industry courses exist, these are almost all vendor specific and often require payment for access to resources and an exam fee, requiring expenditure every iteration. The focus of industry courses, especially certification, is narrow compared to a general cloud computing course, with little background or deep learning. Here we present how to implement a vendor agnostic in-house cloud environment which allows teaching of theory and practice for modest capital investment which can be used in future. The approach creates a scalable private cloud in which workloads can be deployed and concepts explored with no licencing costs. Used successfully for over five years and refined through feedback this can act as a robust toolchain blueprint for others to use and tailor to their needs.