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Significant advances in cloud computing technology and the ubiquity of consumer electronics devices, such as, tablets and smart phones, whic are connected to the Internet have made it possible to develop flexible and cost effective virtual lab systems to support online learning courses that require a computer laboratory component. In this paper, the authors describe their experience of designing and using a virtual computer lab for teaching an online business analytics class. The virtual lab provides an opportunity for students to do hands-on assignments in navigating business data warehouses, creating data cubes, writing SQL queries, creading dashboards and other visualizations, writing reports, and using descriptive and prescriptive models for data mining. The authors describe alternative cloud architetures for designing virtual labs and discuss their criteria for selecting the optimal deploment method.

virtual lab, business analytics education, virtual machine, cloud computing