iximiuz Labs¶

I first came across iximiuz Labs while preparing for my CKA and CKAD exams. It appeared alongside Killercoda and KodeKloud in the Kubernetes official docs as a recommended playground. I tried it, it was noticeably amazing, and after passing these exams I purchased its Lifetime Premium.

iximiuz Labs is a browser-based microVM lab platform. What sets it apart: it supports custom OCI images mounted as a block device rootfs — meaning we can build a fully configured image, push it to GHCR, and the platform boots it as a live VM with systemd as PID 1.

I build custom rootfs images to take advantage of exactly that. Starting from an Ubuntu 24.04 base, I layered five images — each published to GHCR via GitHub Actions — and use them to spin up purpose-built playgrounds on demand. This is an ongoing learning; more images and playgrounds will be added.

rootfs Images¶

Playgrounds¶

Each rootfs powers a dedicated playground. The CI/CD Stack playground combines Jenkins, SonarQube, and Nexus alongside a Dev Machine node into a single four-node Flexbox environment.