The Linux Foundation and edX Announce New, Free Introduction to OpenStack Course

Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) to provide students an understanding of OpenStack cloud technology, including deployment, management and scaling

SAN FRANCISCO, CA – September 14, 2016 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit advancing professional open source management for mass collaboration, today announced its newest massive open online course (MOOC) is available for registration. The course, LFS152x – Introduction to OpenStack, is offered through edX, the nonprofit online learning destination founded by Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The course is free and will go live this October.

This is the third edX MOOC offered by The Linux Foundation. Its first course, Intro to Linux, has reached more than 600,000 students globally and continues to grow in registrations. The second, Intro to Cloud Infrastructure Technologies, became available in June.

“To keep current with their profession, sysadmins of all stripes must have at least basic knowledge of cloud technologies, especially OpenStack,” said Linux Foundation General Manager for Training and Certification Clyde Seepersad. “We knew edX was an ideal partner to help increase the pool of talent qualified in OpenStack by providing a platform to make high-quality education easily accessible to people looking to build rewarding careers managing OpenStack clouds.”

OpenStack, already a top cloud computing platform for private clouds, is growing at an unprecedented rate, with 65% of OpenStack deployments now in production — a 33% increase from the previous year.

The demand for individuals who have experience managing this cloud platform is also accelerating. According to the 2016 Open Source Jobs Report from The Linux Foundation and Dice, 51% of hiring managers say experience with OpenStack and other cloud technologies are driving open source hiring decisions.

“Skills development is a key success factor for the OpenStack community,” said Heidi Bretz, director of business development and alliances for the OpenStack Foundation. “The Certified OpenStack Administrator program is helping solve this problem, and efforts like the Linux Foundation’s Introduction to OpenStack are a great way to bring the technology to a wide, global audience of professionals interested in developing skills for the next generation of IT careers.”

LFS152x, Introduction to OpenStack, provides an in-depth primer on OpenStack. This course is designed for IT professionals who want a high-level overview of OpenStack and to gain the knowledge required to determine whether OpenStack cloud solutions may meet the IT needs of their organizations. It also serves as a first step for individuals who eventually want to take the Certified OpenStack Administrator exam. In addition, this course helps anyone who wants to set up a small scale OpenStack test environment to gain experience working with OpenStack.

The course covers:

• The origins of OpenStack: Where does it come from and how can you contribute as a developer to the project?

• How to deploy OpenStack: Setup your own lab environment and deploy OpenStack on Ubuntu and CentOS with DevStack and Packstack, respectively.

• How to deploy a virtual machine from Horizon: Get the steps and components that lead to a working and accessible virtual machine.

• An introduction to managing OpenStack from the command line.

• Scaling out your OpenStack cloud by adding SDN, object storage, compute nodes, high availability and more.

“We are proud to work with the Linux Foundation to offer their third MOOC to the edX global learning community,” said Anant Agarwal, edX CEO and MIT Professor. “Linux is helping learners gain the essential training needed in the growing networking and cloud computing disciplines to improve their careers and gain a competitive edge in the workplace.”

The course includes an introduction with course guidelines followed by seven chapters, each with a short quiz at the end. A final exam is also required in order to complete the course. Students may take the complete course at no cost, or add a verified certificate of completion for $99. Pre-registration is now available at https://www.edx.org/course/introduction-openstack-linuxfoundationx-lfs152x.

For more information The Linux Foundation’s training and certification programs, please visit:  http://training.linuxfoundation.org.

About The Linux Foundation

The Linux Foundation is the organization of choice for the world’s top developers and companies to build ecosystems that accelerate open technology development and commercial adoption. Together with the worldwide open source community, it is solving the hardest technology problems by creating the largest shared technology investment in history. Founded in 2000, The Linux Foundation today provides tools, training and events to scale any open source project, which together deliver an economic impact not achievable by any one company. More information can be found at www.linuxfoundation.org.

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