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Klastro Docs

What is Klastro?

Klastro is a platform of hands-on cloud-native labs that open right in your browser. Every lab gives you a real environment — a Kubernetes cluster, one or more virtual machines — provisioned fresh for you and destroyed when it ends. There is nothing to install: a terminal, and sometimes a VS Code editor or web apps, is all you need.

The same platform serves three purposes:

  • Self-paced learning: guided tutorials, graded challenges and open environments, at your own pace.
  • Technical skills assessment: a recruiter invites a candidate to a timed, proctored assessment, then reads their report.
  • Instructor-led training: an instructor moves a class through scenario after scenario and follows every participant.

Scenarios, sessions and tasks

Section titled “Scenarios, sessions and tasks”

Everything starts with a scenario. A scenario describes an environment (the kind of cluster or machines), what is preinstalled on it and, most of the time, a list of tasks to complete. Some scenarios are official, written and maintained by the Klastro team (Official badge); others are authored by your organization in Scenario Studio (Studio badge).

When you launch a scenario, Klastro creates a session: your own copy of the environment, isolated from everyone else’s. The session page shows the setup as it happens (Reserving your environment…, Starting the machines…, Setting up your lab…), then turns into your workspace: instructions on one side, terminal on the other.

A session lives until you end it, or until the lifetime set by the scenario runs out. You can pause it and pick up exactly where you left off later. See Manage your sessions for the details.

Depending on the scenario, your work is validated against the environment itself: Klastro inspects the cluster, not an answer you typed in. If the resource you were asked for exists and behaves as expected, the task passes.

Product types

Section titled “Product types”

In the app, every scenario belongs to one of these four types. They share the same real environments, but not the same rules.

Type What it is Hints Score
Tutorials Guided, step by step. You follow the instructions to the end, and you can check each step. Free None
Challenges A real task, graded. Solve it yourself; your work is graded when you submit it. Cost points Yes, kept in your history
Playgrounds A blank environment, no instructions and nothing to submit. Explore the tool freely. None None
Assessments Exam material, run only inside a timed, proctored assessment you are invited to. Cost points, and every reveal shows on the report Yes, sent to the recruiter

Tutorials, challenges and playgrounds are launched from the Learn menu. An assessment-type scenario is never launched on its own: a recruiter adds it to an assessment, then invites you to it.

Lab is the general word for any environment you launch, whatever its type.

Organizations, roles and plans

Section titled “Organizations, roles and plans”

In Klastro you always work inside an organization: your company, your school, your community or a personal workspace. The organization holds a plan, credits and members. You can belong to several organizations and switch between them.

Labs draw credits, metered on the time they actually run and weighted by environment type. Paused time is not counted, and a provisioning failure is not billed.

At a high level, the plans break down like this:

  • Community — free: tutorials, challenges and playgrounds on the free scenarios in the catalog.
  • Pro — every Pro scenario, for each member holding a Pro seat.
  • Instructor — everything in Pro, plus Scenario Studio and instructor-led training (cohorts and tracks).
  • Enterprise — by contract: proctored hiring assessments, every scenario for every member, Scenario Studio.

Plans, seats and credits are explained in detail in Plans and credits.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”