Azure Lab Services
Set up virtual labs for classes, training, hackathons, and other related scenarios.
OVERVIEW
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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
Features
Simple and scalable
User access
Immediate access to virtual machines for invited users, with no need to share your Azure subscription.
Templates
Custom templates to quickly provision lab virtual machines and use repeatedly across labs.
Scheduling
Scheduling feature to automatically shut down and start virtual machines and limit usage hours.
Scaling
Quick provisioning and scaling to hundreds of virtual machines—the service manages all underlying infrastructure.
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.
Security
Embedded security and compliance
34,000
Full-time equivalent engineers dedicated to security initiatives at Microsoft.
15,000
Partners with specialized security expertise.
>100
Compliance certifications, including over 50 specific to global regions and countries.
Pricing
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.
Resources
Azure Lab Services resources and classes
Frequently asked questions
Frequently asked questions
- 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.
Next steps
Get started with an Azure free account
Pay as you go or try Azure free for up to 30 days.
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