SCS training worldwide: How open training concepts ensure digital sovereignty
Digital sovereignty is an issue that has long since gained significance beyond Europe's borders. Organisations, companies and governments around the world are looking for ways to maintain control over their digital infrastructure and data – independently, securely and based on open standards. This is exactly where Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) to.
SCS is not only the answer to the question of how to operate a digitally sovereign cloud infrastructure – it is also an educational project. Because true sovereignty can only be achieved when people understand what lies behind the technology – and can operate it independently.
Collaboration with GovStack: combining standards, knowledge and practice
Together with the international initiative GovStack A comprehensive training programme has been developed that teaches digital sovereignty in cloud operations in a practical way. GovStack supports the development of digital services worldwide – with standardised building blocks, test and demo environments, and a marketplace for interoperable, open solutions.
The Sovereign Cloud Stack (SCS) project actively participates in this processSCS was instrumental in the development of the Cloud infrastructure building block involved. The SCS reference implementation is also available as a compliant solution on the govstack marketplace listed – an important milestone on the path to greater trust and international dissemination of sovereign cloud technologies.
An important part of this collaboration is a training programme that teaches both technical fundamentals and practical experience. It includes:
- Self-study using online materials,
- a one-week basic training course,
- several weeks of practical work with test environments (e.g. „Cloud-in-a-Box“),
- and advanced training with a focus on real-world operations.
The aim of the programme is to enable committed participants to independently operate a complete SCS cloud (virtualisation and container layer and tools) afterwards – with only occasional support from external partners.
SCS in Africa: Successful training in Kenya
An outstanding example of the implementation of this programme is the first advanced training course in Nairobi, Kenya, which took place in May 2025. A good 20 participants from Kenya, Somalia and Djibouti came together for an intensive week of training. Most of them had already taken part in the basic training courses conducted by Karsten Samaschke in several African countries.
The training was organised and financed by the ITU (International Telecommunication Union, Geneva) and the GIZ (German Society for International Cooperation, Bonn/Eschborn). Simultaneous interpretation was provided on site for French-speaking participants, enabling everyone to actively participate without language barriers.
The training week in Nairobi was characterised by high motivation and intense commitment. Despite a few challenges – in particular, the fact that the infrastructure intended for the preparatory phase was often not available as planned in the participants' home countries – the participants worked with focus and enthusiasm. In doing so, they were able to build a solid foundation of knowledge and skills. With further practical experience and possibly an additional course, they will be able to operate an SCS cloud independently and reliably.
Learning by doing: Cloud-in-a-Box as a local training environment
The training followed a clear principle: explain, try out, apply. Individual topics were first presented and explained in many small modules. Immediately afterwards, the participants put what they had learned into practice in practical tasks – with the support of the trainers, but working independently.
All demonstrations and exercises took place on site at a specially equipped Cloud-in-a-Box (CiaB) This compact, powerful training environment not only made learning tangible, but also independent of a stable internet connection to Europe. This allowed participants to work under realistic conditions at any time – exactly as would be required later in the actual operation of an SCS cloud.
The CiaB used was a powerful minicomputer with 8 Zen4 cores (16 threads), 96 GB RAM and 2×4 TB NVMe storage. It ran all services relevant to the operation of an SCS cloud: Ceph for block and object storage, OpenStack for virtualisation, and several Kubernetes clusters with the SCS cluster stacks.
Via a locally provided Wi-Fi and WireGuard VPN, participants had direct access to the infrastructure from their own laptops, regardless of whether they were running Windows, macOS or Linux. This allowed them to switch seamlessly between theoretical input and practical implementation and gain valuable experience in dealing with user and operator roles.
SCS training material: Open, flexible, jointly developable
Training materials were developed for the entire training programme – modular, practice-oriented and openly available.
The structure follows a didactic concept: each block of knowledge is followed by appropriate exercises – practical tasks that are completed either independently or with the support of the trainers. During the training in Nairobi, most of these exercises were successfully implemented – even if, due to time constraints, not all of them could be completed in full.
The Material is available in Markdown format, can be easily expanded, and can be converted directly into presentations using HedgeDoc, for example, or used as a comprehensive PDF book (currently around 85 pages, as of August 2025).
Particularly important: The documents were published under an open source licence (CC-BY-SA-4.0). This licence requires attribution of the authors (BY) and the sharing of any improvements under the same licence (SA). It was deliberately chosen to ensure that future additions and improvements benefit the entire community.
The Sovereign Cloud Stack and SCS brands remain the property of OSBA. Training courses under the SCS name should therefore be conducted by members and in consultation with the Forum SCS-Standards offered by OSBA. This ensures consistent presentation and guarantees the quality of the training courses. Participation in the forum, conducting your own training courses and further developing the material are expressly encouraged – everyone can contribute here to spreading confident cloud technologies worldwide.
🔗 Download & participate: https://github.com/SovereignCloudStack/scs-training/
acknowledgement
Special thanks go to the ITU for financing and licensing the training materials, to GIZ for organising and financing the training in Kenya, to Karsten Samaschke (VanillaCore) together with me (Kurt Garloff, S7n Cloud Services Limited). The training materials also include dNation Ltd., OSISM Ltd. and the SCS Community contributed to the content.
