Azure Lab Services for Simplified Development and Testing

Azure Lab Services is a game-changer for developers and testers, allowing them to create and manage virtual labs with ease.

With Azure Lab Services, you can provision and manage virtual labs in minutes, not hours. This means you can focus on writing code and testing, rather than waiting for infrastructure to be set up.

Lab creation is also highly scalable, with the ability to create labs with up to 1,000 virtual machines. This is especially useful for large-scale development and testing projects.

Azure Lab Services offers a range of key features and capabilities that make it an attractive solution for educators and administrators. It supports rapid, on-demand lab setup, allowing instructors to build labs quickly and easily.

Instructors can streamline the user experience by inviting students to register for a lab with a registration code, providing them with access from anywhere, anytime. This simplifies the process for both instructors and students.

Azure Lab Services also provides cost-efficiency and control, allowing instructors to set up lab schedules and hours to optimize costs. Additionally, they can configure lab policies to automatically shut down and start up lab VMs, further reducing costs.

The service automatically manages Azure infrastructure and scale, taking care of provisioning and management. This frees up instructors to focus on preparing the lab experience for users.

Lab users can easily register for a lab and access it without the need for an Azure subscription. They can view the list of labs and remotely connect using the Azure Lab Services website or Microsoft Teams or Canvas LMS integration.

Azure Lab Services uses Azure Role-Based Access (Azure RBAC) to manage access, allowing for clear separation of roles and responsibilities. This is particularly useful for organizations with multiple teams and people involved in creating and managing labs.

The service also supports advanced virtual networking, enabling the configuration of network traffic control, network ports management, or access to resources in a virtual or internal network. This is useful for labs that require connection to an on-premises licensing server.

Here are some of the key benefits of Azure Lab Services:

Azure Lab Services is a powerful tool that can be used in a variety of scenarios, making it an ideal solution for many organizations.

You can use Azure Lab Services to provide preconfigured virtual machines to students for completing homework or exercises, limiting the number of hours they have access to their virtual machine.

For research purposes, Azure Lab Services offers small or medium GPU VMs that can be used to set up a compute-intensive or graphics-intensive analysis lab.

Organizations can also use Azure Lab Services to scale, automate lab operations, and save money by moving physical labs to the cloud.

Some common use cases for Azure Lab Services include hosting hackathons, providing virtual machines for classroom or virtual training, and setting up labs for research or training purposes.

Here are some specific examples of how Azure Lab Services can be used:

To get started with Azure Lab Services, you create a lab plan. A lab plan is an Azure resource that serves as the collection of configuration settings. The settings apply to all labs associated with the lab plan. Optionally, you can assign lab creator permissions through Azure RBAC to allow others to create labs.

You can create a lab plan by navigating to Azure Lab Services in the Azure Portal and clicking "Add" to create a new lab account. Enter the lab account name, select the subscription, and specify the location where the lab account will be located. You must also add the Lab Creator role to an existing Azure AD user or create a new one.

To create a lab, log in to labs.azure.com with the account created previously, and click "Add" to create a new lab. Set its name and the maximum number of VMs, and select the Virtual Machine specifications, including core, RAM, and VM Image. You can also specify the credentials to access the virtual machines and make changes to the virtual machine template.

You can confirm that your lab is ready to be used in the Azure Portal by clicking "Labs".

Creating preconfigured virtual machines is a breeze with Azure Lab Services. You can provide on-demand or scheduled access to preconfigured virtual machines to support your scenarios.

Immediate access to virtual machines is granted to invited users, eliminating the need to share your Azure subscription. This makes it easy to teach a class, train professionals, or host a hands-on lab.

Custom templates can be created to quickly provision lab virtual machines and used repeatedly across labs. This saves time and effort in setting up new labs.

Scheduling can be set up to automatically shut down and start virtual machines and limit usage hours. This ensures that lab virtual machines are only active when needed.

Quick provisioning and scaling to hundreds of virtual machines are also possible, with the service managing all underlying infrastructure. This means you don't have to worry about the technical details.

Cost Optimization is a crucial aspect of setting up a lab. You can manage your lab budget with usage-control features, which allow you to schedule designated usage times and set up recurring automatic shutdowns and start times.

Tracking individual's hourly usage is also possible, or you can limit usage by setting up quotas. This helps you stay on top of your lab's expenses and make informed decisions about resource allocation.

Lab Services provides automatic provisioning and management of your lab's infrastructure, so you can focus on preparing the right lab experience for your users. The service will handle the rest, rolling out and scaling your lab to hundreds of virtual machines.

Here are some specific features of Lab Services that can help with cost optimization:

To get started with Azure Lab Services, you need to create a lab account in the Azure portal. This involves navigating to Azure Lab Services, clicking "Add" to create a new lab account, and entering the required information such as the lab account name, subscription, resource group, location, and peer virtual network.

You must also add the Lab Creator role to an existing Azure AD user or create a new one. Once the lab account is created, you can specify which Azure Marketplace images are available for the Lab Creator to use.

To enable an image, simply select the image and click "Enable selected images". This will allow the Lab Creator to create a template based on these images.

The first three steps of setting up a classroom lab in Azure occur in your Azure subscription, but the Azure labs are created in internal Microsoft subscriptions. Azure Lab Services and Azure DevTest Labs are the two Microsoft services that can set up lab environments in Azure.

Azure Lab Services provide managed classroom labs, while Azure DevTest Labs provide development and test environments in the cloud. Both services offer fast, easy, and flexible lab setup, streamlined lab user experience, and cost optimization and analysis.

Here are the key differences between Azure Lab Services and Azure DevTest Labs:

To get started with Azure Lab Services, you create a lab plan, which is an Azure resource that serves as the collection of configuration settings. The settings apply to all labs associated with the lab plan. You can also assign lab creator permissions through Azure RBAC to allow others to create labs.

To create a lab plan, navigate to Azure Lab Services, click "Lab plans", and then click "Create". You can then run through creating the lab plan, specifying the lab plan name, location, and resource group elements.

Once the lab plan is created, you can move on to creating a lab. To do this, log in to the lab account created previously and click "Add" to create a new lab, setting its name and the maximum number of VMs. You can then specify the virtual machine specifications, such as core, RAM, and VM image.

To create a lab, you can use the Azure portal or the Azure Lab Services website. To use the Azure Lab Services website, log in with the account created previously and click "Add" to create a new lab. You can then set the lab name, maximum number of VMs, and virtual machine specifications.

Here are the basic elements that need to be in place before you can start using your labs:

To create a lab, you need to create a lab plan and then create a lab based on that plan. You can use the Azure portal or the Azure Lab Services website to create a lab.