Training resources are always a challenge for IT departments. There is a fine line between letting new team members do more without supervision and keeping the lights on by making sure no mistakes are made in the production environment. Leaning towards the latter method and limiting new team members’ access to production deployments may lead to knowledge gaps. How can new team members learn if they never get time on the network?
To close the knowledge gaps, IT teams can leverage a networking digital twin. A digital twin provides a fully functional replica of a production deployment, so each member of the team can learn in a safe and sandboxed environment. A digital twin eliminates the risk of making mistakes that could materially impact the business. Changes can be implemented and validated in a sandbox environment before pushing any changes to production, providing a new level of confidence.
Train with NVIDIA Air
NVIDIA has such an offering with the Air Infrastructure Simulation Platform (Air). The program supports organizations training their staff by leveraging a digital twin approach and providing a full production experience for all team members. With everyone able to contribute (either by training in Air or working directly in production), IT departments can use staff more effectively and boost operational efficiency.
With the use of NVIDIA Air, IT teams give team members their own replica of the production environment on which to learn. No more waiting for hardware resources to be racked and stacked, or balancing limited lab time across multiple users. Staff can use the platform for free, build an exact network digital twin, validate configurations, confirm security policies, and test CI/CD pipelines. In addition to CLI access, the platform provides full software functionality and access to the core system components such as Docker containers and APIs.
This allows less-skilled team members to be an integral part of the network operation, helping them to catch up with the team’s experience, enhance the sense of belonging within the team, and gain confidence to work on production when the time is right.
Get Started
Air is free to use and easy to work with. Build your own digital twin today, and help your team to learn the production environment, practice procedures, and test changes without introducing risk.
