SDU uses its own supercomputer to build virtual teaching labs with full ownership
The University of Southern Denmark (SDU) is now leveraging its existing supercomputer infrastructure to create virtual teaching laboratories for IT education. The initiative gives students access to high-end server environments and distributed systems while enabling SDU to keep full ownership of the teaching platform and ensure predictable, transparent use of resources.
- With commercial cloud providers, costs can increase quickly if resources are provisioned incorrectly or left running longer than intended. Students can certainly learn how to optimize usage, but the platforms are generally built for commercial operations rather than for teaching at scale with stable budgets and controlled learning environments.
This is according to Professor Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard from the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute at SDU. He leads the new project, VSLab (Virtual Software Laboratories), which has just received a grant of DKK 1,999,000 from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
The project addresses a long-standing challenge in IT education: the industry expects graduates to master complex, distributed systems, yet universities often lack teaching platforms that allow safe experimentation without uncertainty around billing, external dependencies, or restrictions from commercial licensing models.
With VSLab, SDU aims to build reusable teaching content and course-ready lab environments on infrastructure it already controls—making advanced IT training more accessible, consistent, and aligned with educational needs.
- In a traditional education, students work in a ‘one computer environment’. However, in the industry, software runs across multiple distributed nodes. We need to invest in development time and the software stack so we can give students a realistic environment where they can experiment safely.
With VSLab, SDU is building an internal “sandbox” on top of the university’s existing e-Science platform, UCloud. Here, open-source components are orchestrated to simulate real production environments.
This allows students to work with container technology, microservices, and DevSecOps at scale—without fear of budget overruns or GDPR issues.
This is according to Professor Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard from the Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute at SDU. He leads the new project, VSLab (Virtual Software Laboratories), which has just received a grant of DKK 1,999,000 from the Novo Nordisk Foundation.
The project addresses a long-standing challenge in IT education: the industry expects graduates to master complex, distributed systems, yet universities often lack teaching platforms that allow safe experimentation without uncertainty around billing, external dependencies, or restrictions from commercial licensing models.
With VSLab, SDU aims to build reusable teaching content and course-ready lab environments on infrastructure it already controls—making advanced IT training more accessible, consistent, and aligned with educational needs.
No more “Works on my machine”
Today, much teaching still takes place locally on students’ own laptops. This creates a gap between education and real-world practice, explains Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard:- In a traditional education, students work in a ‘one computer environment’. However, in the industry, software runs across multiple distributed nodes. We need to invest in development time and the software stack so we can give students a realistic environment where they can experiment safely.
With VSLab, SDU is building an internal “sandbox” on top of the university’s existing e-Science platform, UCloud. Here, open-source components are orchestrated to simulate real production environments.
This allows students to work with container technology, microservices, and DevSecOps at scale—without fear of budget overruns or GDPR issues.
Facts about VSLab
• Name: VSLab – Virtual Software Laboratories as a Scalable Research Infrastructure for Higher IT Education
• Grant: DKK 2 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (PREPARE program)
• Technology: Built on SDU’s UCloud platform with a focus on open-source orchestration
• Purpose: To give students hands-on experience with Big Data, Cloud Computing, and DevSecOps in a risk-free environment
Contact for further information:
Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Professor
Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU
Phone: +45 65 50 73 80
Email: mbkj@mmmi.sdu.dk
• Grant: DKK 2 million from the Novo Nordisk Foundation (PREPARE program)
• Technology: Built on SDU’s UCloud platform with a focus on open-source orchestration
• Purpose: To give students hands-on experience with Big Data, Cloud Computing, and DevSecOps in a risk-free environment
Contact for further information:
Mikkel Baun Kjærgaard, Professor
Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute, SDU
Phone: +45 65 50 73 80
Email: mbkj@mmmi.sdu.dk
Training with terabytes and system failures
It is not only the finances that improve. The academic level is also significantly raised. According to Associate Professor Aisha Umair, who is responsible for the project’s pedagogy, students must get hands-on experience deep inside the machinery.- In advanced courses in Machine Learning and Big Data, students must handle terabytes of data across multiple servers. They need to learn distributed training, resource management, and system monitoring. These are skills that cannot be learned meaningfully on a laptop, explains Aisha Umair.
The ambition is to create a “software factory” approach, where students experience the entire workflow from data preparation to deployment.
- We will design lab activities where students encounter realistic dependencies, performance limitations, and even system failures.
This will mirror industry practice far better than the physical laboratories we have today, she says.
Democratizing computing power
The project also has a social dimension. By moving computing power from individual backpacks into a shared, SDU-operated cloud, differences in students’ private hardware are levelled out.- This aligns with our goal of an inclusive learning environment. Regardless of the laptop you can afford, you gain access to the same standardised, high-performance environment through VSLab. That ensures equal opportunities for everyone, Aisha Umair emphasises.
The result should be graduates who are “ready to cook” for companies such as Danfoss and LEGO, because they not only understand the theory but also have hands-on experience with the modern toolchain that drives Danish industry.
From technical frustration to an innovation playground
The need for the new platform is clearly felt among students. Joakim Vestergård Leed, a software engineering student and teaching assistant, often sees how a lack of infrastructure can kill motivation rather than ignite academic curiosity.- Unfortunately, I see students lose confidence because their local development environments break down, and we lack a shared platform. SDU has stood still in this area for too long, while technology has advanced rapidly toward distributed systems. As a result, we currently lack the teaching platform to learn the operational skills that the industry is asking for, says Joakim Vestergård Leed.
He therefore sees the grant as the key to unlocking untapped potential by using the university’s own hardware:
- Students should have access from the start to a system where they can experiment safely. Being allowed to build, break, and innovate in a real cloud environment is without doubt the best way to prepare for reality.
VSLab is expected to be rolled out for teaching from January 2026.