Azure Lab Services
Set up virtual labs for classes, training, hackathons, and other related scenarios.
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.
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Immediate access to virtual machines for invited users, with no need to share your Azure subscription
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Custom templates to quickly provision lab virtual machines and use repeatedly across labs
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Scheduling feature to automatically shut down and start virtual machines and limit usage hours
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Quick provisioning and scaling to hundreds of virtual machines—the service manages all underlying infrastructure
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.
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Get automatic management and scaling
As a managed service, Lab Services gives you automatic provisioning and management of your lab's infrastructure. Just prepare the right lab experience for your users and the service will handle the rest, rolling out and scaling your lab to hundreds of virtual machines.
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
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Microsoft invests more than $1 billion annually on cybersecurity research and development.
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We employ more than 3,500 security experts who are dedicated to data security and privacy.
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Pay only for what you need, with no upfront cost
With Azure Lab Services, you pay only for active usage in your labs. The hourly price of a lab instance bundles compute, IP, network, disk, and other costs, so calculating your bill is easy.
Get started with an Azure free account
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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.
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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.
Community and support
Availability
Sample class types
Networking
Teach the concepts of network and system configuration, management, and troubleshooting.
Frequently asked questions about Azure Lab Services
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A lab plan is a collection of configurations and settings that apply to a lab. Learn how to create a lab plan.
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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.
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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.
