Learning@Cisco launched Cisco Learning Labs a year ago as an online environment geared toward helping networking pros practice lab exercises for Cisco certifications. The lab environment uses a version of IOS that runs on UNIX. It’s positioned as a cheap alternative to home labs or the physical labs that some certification boot camps that rent out. Cisco Learning Labs rents out 25-hour blocks of online lab time at a starting price of $25.

The new version of Cisco Learning Labs has been dressed up with an updated user interface to make it more intuitive for users, according to Marcello Hunter, product manager for Learning@Cisco.These updates have been added to the ICND1, ICND2, ROUTE, SWITCH and TSHOOT labs. These labs now feature helpful elements like “question bubbles,” that new users can click on to get hints on what to do.

“A lot of our customers working on these labs are newcomers to the networking world and newcomers to the complexities of working with networks,” Hunter said. ‘Just learning how to set them up and launch them and learning how to work with the user interface of IOS was new to them.”

The lab environment also has a series of new instructional videos that accompany the ICND1 and ICND2 labs.

Cisco has also introduced an expanded set of lab exercises based on switch functions that are typically implemented in hardware and are thus not available via an IOS software image. These functions include Layer 2 port security and port channel interfaces. The Layer 2 port security feature will expand the labs exercises available for all Cisco certifications. The port channel interface will expand labs for certifications CCNP and above.

The program, developed in conjunction with Metropolitan Community College of Omaha, teaches skills in virtualization and server consolidation, energy efficiency, security and compliance and business issues that arise in the data center. It’s unclear whether those issues include IT in-fighting between networking, systems and storage teams.

What the program does promise is problem-solving in a real-world setting — if your real world is built on IBM hardware and software. The school’s data center lab includes IBM Power Systems servers running AIX, IBM I and Linux.

Until now, there haven’t been viable options for vendor-neutral virtualization certifications, but companies like VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and Red Hat all offer specialization courses. There are generalized data center certifications and degrees, though those are typically on the graduate level.

But at a time when the data center is diversifying in vendor offerings and equipment, it’s questionable whether students should invest their money and time in such a vendor-focused program. That said Cisco made its equipment the holy grail of networking in large part by partnering with community colleges to build network certification programs — and it’s clear CCNAs and CCIEs the world over have gotten their foot in the door and then learned diverse technologies on their feet.

What makes this degree attractive despite its vendor affiliation is its focus on virtualization as a central part of the data center. Along with the rise in virtualization has come a plethora of management issues and in-fighting about who controls virtual machines – networking, systems or storage. Forrester analyst Rob Whiteley has suggested the answer is the emergence of a new “virtualization administrator.” If that’s the case, this degree – and others like it that will soon pop up – may be the first step toward that role.

Metropolitan will offer the IBM green data center course (virtually of course) to students at other participating universities.