Hello there 👋

It's a short one, but you'll probably like it.

I was checking the stats the other day and was unpleasantly surprised by the percentage of students who have tried solving iximiuz Labs hands-on challenges:

• Only 10% of all signed-up students have solved one or more challenges.
• Only half of the above people solved more than two challenges.

These numbers are plain disappointing to me. However, what I also discovered is that there is a strong "core" of about 500 students who have solved 30+ challenges (and likely attempted even more - this stats is a bit harder to check).

Clearly, many people are getting a ton of value from hands-on learning, but I'm definitely not doing a good job promoting this format. So, here is what I came up with.

From now on, you can improve your free membership by solving challenges:

• Each successful submission will increase the maximum daily usage time by 5 minutes. The bump is permanent, so you can double the default one-hour usage limit by solving just 12 challenges, or triple it by solving 24 challenges, and so on.
• Solving 3 challenges will make your playgrounds' Internet access unlimited. I've always wanted to eliminate this artificial limitation on the free tier, but couldn't because of the persistent bot threat. This is probably the best opportunity to prove you're not a bot, enhance your skills, and improve your playgrounds all at once.
• Last but not least, solving 10 challenges will grant you a month of free Premium access (one time) 🎉

What's in it for me? Not much, really. Technically, I'm giving things out for free. But I've been putting a lot of effort into preparing these learning materials, and I believe it's a great way to improve your Linux, networking, Docker, and Kubernetes skills. It would be a shame if they remained underutilized for any longer.

Speaking of, here is a batch of new challenges from the past ~week, check them out:

• ​Docker Volumes: Upgrade a Containerized App Without Losing Data​
• ​Avoid Data Loss When Running Database Containers: Named vs Anonymous Volumes​
• ​Free Up Disk Space by Removing Unused Docker Volumes​
• ​Docker 101: Restart an Application Container on Failure Automatically​

Ah, and by the way, another thing that I always forget to promote is our Discord channel - it's probably the best place to discuss the learning and real-world technical problems, so I hope to see you there.

Learning by doing for the win! 🚀

Cheers

Ivan

P.S. Already a premium member? Share this update with a friend :)