Create a lab of preconfigured virtual machines
Easily set up and provide on-demand access to preconfigured virtual machines (VMs) to support your scenarios. Teach a class, train professionals, run a hackathon or a hands-on lab, and more. Simply define your needs and the service will roll the lab out to your audience. Users access all their lab VMs from a single place.
- Immediate access to VMs for invited users, with no need to share your Azure subscription
- Custom templates to quickly provision lab VMs and use repeatedly across labs
- Scheduling feature to automatically shut down and start VMs and limit usage hours
- Provisioning and scaling to hundreds of VMs with a single click—with the service managing all underlying infrastructure
Simple user experience
Invite users to access lab resources right away. When they sign in, they’ll see a full list of VMs they can access across multiple labs. With one click they can connect and start working—no Azure subscription needed.
Cost optimization and tracking
Manage your lab budget with usage control features. Schedule designated usage times or set up recurring auto-shutdowns and start times. Track individuals’ hourly usage or limit usage by setting up quotas.
Automatic management and scaling
As a managed service, Lab Services gives you automatic provisioning and management of your lab’s underlying 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 VMs with a single click.
When to use Azure Lab Services
Classes or professional training
Configure lab VMs 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 VMs to meet demand.
Customer trials and demos
Create invitation-only private labs for demoing your prerelease software.
Developer machines and test environments
Provision multi-resource environments that consist of platform as a service (PaaS) and VM resources in our closely related Azure DevTest Labs. Share preconfigured resources or enable users to create their own.
Why Azure for security?
- Microsoft invests over $1 billion annually on cybersecurity research and development.
- We employ more than 3,500 security experts who are completely focused on securing your data and privacy.
- Azure has more compliance certifications than any other cloud provider. View the comprehensive list.
Pay for just what you need, with no upfront cost
With Azure Lab Services, you only pay 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 a simple step.
Everything you need to get started
New to Azure? Sign up for a free Azure account and get $200 in credit.
Create a lab account for your team or department. All labs are managed under a lab account.
Documentation, tutorials, and more
Administrators
Set up a lab account for your team or department in the Azure portal. Give access to instructors to create their own labs. Set policies within the lab account to control usage.
Instructors
Create a lab under your team or department's lab account. Configure the lab and invite your students and users.
Lab users
Use a preconfigured VM in your instructor’s lab. Sign in and get immediate access to VMs.
Community and support
Ask questions and get support from Microsoft engineers and Azure community experts on the Azure Lab Services community forum, or chat with an Azure support specialist.
Share feedback about Lab Services
Suggest product features and improvements and vote on priorities in UserVoice.
Region availability
Check Azure Lab Services availability near you.
Get started with example class types
Ethical hacking
Run an ethical hacking class where students can learn modern techniques for defending against vulnerabilities.
Natural language processing with deep learning
Students can explore basics of Natural language processing and gain skills to design and implement deep learning models.
Scripting with Linux
Students can learn the basics of Linux system administration and familiarize themselves with bash shell scripting.
Frequently asked questions about Azure Lab Services
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Currently, you can provide one VM per user in a lab. To enable a multi-VM environment, when configuring the template VM, choose the large VM size. This size supports nested virtualization through Hyper-V. Learn more.
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A lab account is a management account each team or department establishes to create and track labs. Each lab account is connected to an Azure subscription, and billing and organization-level policies are applied to it.
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Neither instructors nor users need to have an Azure subscription. However, they do need to have a work or school account backed by Azure Active Directory (AAD), or a personal Microsoft account (MSA).