Classroom and training preparation

Recently I've been involved in training abroad, mostly Middle east and Asia, some interesting figures shows up. There is procedure when we negotiate training in someoneelse classroom, we always send a minimal requirements to training partner. Basically we have to get confirmation if we can use classroom,  

Somehow this procedure failed, recently we have almost 75% of partners provided classrooms not satisfying minimal requirements.  Incredible combination of wrong configurations, wrong OS, heavy infected machines, broken hardware, wrong type of machines (MACs instead of PCs), power problems, everything bundled up,  you just  mention it. In all this situation there was a common line, we were negotiating with another company who was than facilitating things, in fact we were never in touch with technical staff responsible for classroom. A broken phone problem. Looks like this is unsolvable issue cultural thing, so how to prevent or mitigate such problems ?

Obvious solution, one where  to quit course and force partner to accept responsibility and pay penalities for mistakes will not work. So we are left with be smart, plan, prepare and adopt in your budget limits, This rules out "bringing the whole HW and SW class in one big pelican box" a wonderful solution but way to costly.

To be honest I love to have even a small pelican box with me, something reliable in wilderness, but 

we can only  afford approach where pelican box is small one , with minimal HW :) 

On what facts we can rely :

1. classrooms are based on intel machines 

• mixes of configurations, from dual core 32 bit machines up, 
• minimum  USB 2.0 ports, bootable from USB
• various localisations keyboard layouts / languages
• most of machines does not have CD workable drive 

1. networking is usually there (wifi or wired) but can't be relied on
2. computers are in various states of OS and SW anarchy 

Strategy to win such classroom :

1) we will use existing classroom computers but in safe and reliable way,

• boot each student PC into reliable and safe linux configuration and use appropriate virtual machine for student work
• boot can be from USB or over network or from CD (rarely)

2) for clasroom server use trainer or trainer backup machine

• again use virtual machine 
•  boot from safe boot source, usb or network or from CD (rarely)

3) for networking use existing infrastructure or wifi over usb and 3G/4G hotspot on local mobile device, can be challenging

From this requirements you can easily draw a list of HW and SW which fits into one small pelican box ,  but a huge set of planning, testing and preparations, I'll cover that later

13.7.2016 List of devices and tools for such classrom

Items

Tablet / smartphone as local 3G/4G wifi hotspot, 8 conncetions

USB 3.0 stick with write block HW switch, 32 GB or more

USB 3.0 HUB with 4 ports and power

USB wifi module with windows & linux drivers

Labtops: 64 bit 4 core, 3 HD, 16 GB+, 4 USB 3.0 ports, GB etherent

USB 3.0 external disks and enclOsures

(with encRyprtIon)

CD with various linux distributions

USB CD rom / DVD

PCMCIA usb 3.0 card

USB 3.0/2.0 cables

USB 3.0/2.0 connectros / gender changers

Powersupplies for all devices and spares

Extension cords, power connetors etc

Tools, labels, stickers

Pelican box