The infrastructure and container eco-system is moving at a rapid pace. New versions of DC/OS are introducing new and compelling improvements, and our Universe of packages continues to amaze and offers solutions to every-day software problems. However, keeping up-to-date and aware of what's possible can feel like an impossible task.

To help make this easier, Katacoda has teamed up with DC/OS to create a live interactive environment for DC/OS, accessible from within your browser without any downloads or configuration, all for free. The environment provides you with a pre-configured personalised deployment of DC/OS running on top of CoreOS with a single CoreOS agent. From here you can start experimenting with how DC/OS operates and it's capabilities.

To get started, you can follow the step-by-step guide for deploying your first containers via the CLI and Marathon. The guide aims to give you a feel for the core DC/OS concepts and remove the initial barrier to entry.

The playground environment is available via katacoda.com … try it out now!

DC/OS Playground on Katacoda.

Katacoda

Katacoda is an interactive learning platform designed for software developers. The platform provides complete, production-like, environments where users have full control.

Under the covers, Katacoda is providing users with a full installation of DC/OS, based on the Advanced Installation Guide. As a result, the installation should look and feel consistent with other DC/OS systems created manually or via an existing Cloud Template.

The Master and Agent are running on top of CoreOS. They're running on the full operating system, you can even ssh into them, try ssh core@master or ssh core@agent01 .

The platform removes concerns about configuring and setting up conditions, accidentally leaving a cloud machine running or simply having to reload an existing Virtual Machine. With Katacoda, you refresh, and you have a brand new, pre-configured environment.

Our entire platform concentrates on improving how developers learn. With pre-configured environments and a guided pathway, we want to make it fun, exciting and straightforward to acquire new skills and technologies.

Freedom to experiment

It's this rapid creation of environments that introduces a freedom to experiment. You can explore different configurations, different ways to deployment and configurations without fear of cost or breaking your system.

Exploring the Universe

Part of this freedom is the opportunity to explore the Universe. By Universe, we mean the vast array of packages provided as part of DC/OS. Interested in how Jenkins works on top of DC/OS? Give it a try and find out.

Showcase DC/OS

We're hoping that the environment creates an opportunity to highlight the fantastic packages available and the excellent work happening in the community.

Over the coming weeks, the Katacoda team will continue to extend the available Test Drives and scenarios to showcase what DC/OS. For example, our website already explains Jenkins for building Docker Images, but we want to describe how to deploy Jenkins at scale. We can explain how DC/OS can load balance and auto-scale your workloads with the existing packages available. Our aim is even to illustrate how to run big data workloads using Spark on top of DC/OS without you having to download or config anything.

This is our plan, but we would love to hear from the DC/OS community. What scenarios would you like to Test Drive on DC/OS? What do you think about the environment? Let us know!