Beginner · Chapter 1Free
First contact
Find your bearings on an eight-GPU node.
Linux shellGPU inventory
Suggested preparation: First contact
Start challenge →Practice without the next-command prompt
Can you explain the recovery?
Use the same missions with guidance hidden. Inspect the evidence, reach the required machine state and answer the final reasoning check. Open a hint when you need one; the session records that help.
Beginner · Chapter 1Free
Idle, but not empty
Find the process holding 56 GiB of GPU memory.
Memory residencyProcess ownership
Suggested preparation: First contact
Start challenge →Beginner · Chapter 1Free
The version trap
Separate the driver, its CUDA ceiling and the compiler.
Driver inspectionCUDA toolkit
Suggested preparation: First contact
Start challenge →Beginner · Chapter 2Premium
Bring it online
Take a model service from stopped to healthy.
Service lifecycleHealth checks
Suggested preparation: From model to endpoint
Start challenge →Beginner · Chapter 2Premium
Make it fit
Repair an impossible context and concurrency budget.
KV cache mathConfiguration
Suggested preparation: From model to endpoint
Start challenge →Beginner · Chapter 2Premium
The silent endpoint
A running process, a client pointed somewhere else.
SocketsConfig reload
Suggested preparation: From model to endpoint
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 3Premium
Which GPU is zero?
Follow device visibility through a model launch.
CUDA visibilityDevice identity
Suggested preparation: You’re on call
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 3Premium
Read the fabric
Discover what a topology table can and cannot tell you.
NVLink topologyDiagnostic limits
Suggested preparation: You’re on call
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 3Premium
Night shift
Recover a failed endpoint with fewer instructions.
Incident diagnosisRecovery verification
Suggested preparation: You’re on call
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 4Premium
A missing link
Trace a local link fault without treating topology as a benchmark.
NVLink healthKernel evidence
Suggested preparation: Hardware detective
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 4Premium
The first hop
Locate an InfiniBand problem at the node boundary.
InfiniBandHCA identity
Suggested preparation: Hardware detective
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 4Premium
After an ECC event
Separate device recovery from application recovery.
ECC countersRecovery sequence
Suggested preparation: Hardware detective
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 4Premium
Yesterday’s error, today’s state
Interpret an error counter without erasing history.
Counter lifetimesEvidence freshness
Suggested preparation: Hardware detective
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 4Premium
What did the check test?
Use DCGM preflight without treating Pass as a certificate.
DCGM discoveryDiagnostic scope
Suggested preparation: Hardware detective
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 5Premium
The file will not parse
Recover from a configuration syntax failure.
JSON validationService logs
Suggested preparation: Serving engineer
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 5Premium
Spend the KV budget
Trade concurrency for longer contexts using explicit arithmetic.
KV cache sizingCapacity tradeoffs
Suggested preparation: Serving engineer
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 5Premium
Free memory, rejected launch
Distinguish available capacity from the configured fraction.
Admission limitsMemory fraction
Suggested preparation: Serving engineer
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 5Premium
Saved is not applied
Observe the boundary between a file and a live process.
Configuration lifecycleSocket verification
Suggested preparation: Serving engineer
Start challenge →Intermediate · Chapter 5Premium
Find capacity without collateral damage
Place a service around another team’s allocation.
Process ownershipSafe placement
Suggested preparation: Serving engineer
Start challenge →Advanced · Chapter 6Premium
Two faults, two fabrics
Separate a local GPU link from a network adapter incident.
Fault isolationNVLink vs InfiniBand
Suggested preparation: Incident command
Start challenge →Advanced · Chapter 6Premium
The second blocker
Recover a launch with a bad configuration and a bad target.
Layered diagnosisCapacity recovery
Suggested preparation: Incident command
Start challenge →Advanced · Chapter 6Premium
Follow the client to the device
Verify the full endpoint identity after a migration.
Device mappingEndpoint contracts
Suggested preparation: Incident command
Start challenge →Advanced · Chapter 6Premium
The green check’s blind spot
Diagnose a fabric fault that software preflight does not cover.
Diagnostic coverageIndependent evidence
Suggested preparation: Incident command
Start challenge →Advanced · Chapter 6Premium
Close the shift
Recover a device, a memory budget and the endpoint contract.
Incident synthesisRecovery evidence
Suggested preparation: Incident command
Start challenge →A practice record with a clear scope.
Challenges reuse the guided mission environments and access levels. Completion means reaching the lab checkpoints and answering its reasoning check. It is not an NVIDIA certification exam or an estimate of interview success.
Return to the guided learning path →Independent educational software. Not affiliated with or endorsed by NVIDIA Corporation. NVIDIA and its product names are trademarks of NVIDIA Corporation.
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DC Lab Sim components MIT License Copyright (c) 2026 Sean Boerhout Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE. xterm.js Copyright (c) 2017-2019, The xterm.js authors (https://github.com/xtermjs/xterm.js) Copyright (c) 2014-2016, SourceLair Private Company (https://www.sourcelair.com) Copyright (c) 2012-2013, Christopher Jeffrey (https://github.com/chjj/) Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions: The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software. THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.