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Azure

Azure Lab Services

Set up virtual labs for classes, training, hackathons, and other related scenarios.

Azure Lab Services will be retired on June 28, 2027. Click here for more information

Create a lab of preconfigured virtual machines

Easily provide on-demand or scheduled access to preconfigured virtual machines to support your scenarios. Teach a class, train professionals, run a hackathon, or host a hands-on lab—simply define your needs and the service will distribute the lab in the cloud to the recipients.

Learn about the key performance, reliability, and other user-experience improvements in Azure Lab Services

Simplify the user experience

Invite users to access lab resources right away. When they sign in, they'll see a full list of virtual machines they can access across multiple labs to connect and start working—no Azure subscription needed.

Optimize and track costs

Manage your lab budget with usage-control features. Schedule designated usage times, or set up recurring automatic shutdowns and start times. Track individuals’ hourly usage, or limit usage by setting up quotas.

Azure Lab Services use cases

Classes and professional training

Configure lab virtual machines with the right content and give each user a set number of hours to complete their homework or projects.

Hackathons and hands-on labs

Create interactive experiences at conferences and events. Scale up to hundreds of virtual machines to meet demand.

Customer trials and demos

Create invitation-only private labs to demonstrate your prerelease software.

Innovate and experiment

Drive innovation by provisioning Windows or Linux machines to develop, experiment, and test your proof-of-concept ideas.

Comprehensive security and compliance, built in

Get started with an Azure free account

1

Start free. Get USD200 credit to use within 30 days. While you have your credit, get free amounts of many of our most popular services, plus free amounts of 55+ other services that are always free.

2

After your credit, move to pay as you go to keep building with the same free services. Pay only if you use more than your free monthly amounts.

3

After 12 months, you'll keep getting 55+ always-free services—and still pay only for what you use beyond your free monthly amounts.

Azure Lab Services resources

Administrators

Set up lab plans and usage policies for your team or department in the Azure portal. Give educators access to create their own labs.

Educators

Create a lab under your team's or department's lab plan. Configure the lab and invite your students and users.

Students

Use a preconfigured virtual machine in your instructor's lab. Sign in and get immediate access to virtual machines.

Feedback

Suggest product features and improvements, and vote on priorities.

Sample class types

Ethical hacking

Teach modern techniques for defending against vulnerabilities.

Data science

Teach the basics of data science using Python and Jupyter Notebooks.

Networking

Teach the concepts of network and system configuration, management, and troubleshooting.

Frequently asked questions about Azure Lab Services

  • A lab plan is a collection of configurations and settings that apply to a lab. Learn how to create a lab plan.

  • The new version of Lab Services replaces the lab account concept with the lab plan concept. Both are used for controlling the configuration and settings for the labs. Learn about the new improvements.

  • Lab plan offers many benefits compared to a lab account when creating labs in the service. Also, lab accounts will be retired on September 30, 2024. Any labs created with a lab account will stop working at that time. Learn more about a lab plan and how to use them to create labs.

Ready when you are—let's set up your Azure free account

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