Guidance Needed: Using Azure Lab Services for AZ-104, AZ-700, AI & Cybersecurity Training
Hello everyone, I’m planning several upcoming training programs (AZ-104, AZ-700, and other AI and cybersecurity–related certifications), and I’m considering using Azure Lab Services for the student labs. I haven’t used Azure Lab Services before, so I’d really appreciate insights from anyone who has real experience with it. Specifically, I’d like to understand: - Does each student receive their own individual login and lab environment? - How much control does the instructor have over the virtual machines (start/stop, reset, limits, schedules)? Is Azure Lab Services limited to VMs only, or can students also work with other Azure resources such as load balancers, firewalls, VNets, etc.? - One of my key objectives is for students to learn how to build and deploy VMs themselves. Is this supported within Azure Lab Services, or is it more focused on pre-built lab environments? - Students also should work with Entra ID, So create and manage users with RBAC. Is it covered? From your experience, what is the approximate cost per student per month, and how manageable is cost control? Any additional guidance, best practices, or lessons learned would be greatly appreciated. Feel free to reply here or DM me if that’s easier. Thank you in advance for your support. Best regards, Ali M.
Azure Lab Services - lab plan outage - April 15, 2025
Hello, Azure Lab Services is currently experiencing an outage affecting customers using Lab Plans for their service. Customers using Lab Accounts are not affected. This issue impacts all operations across all regions. The root cause has been identified, and a hotfix is being rolled out. We expect service to be fully restored by the end of the business day (CDT) on April 15, 2025. We will provide updates about the outage in this blog post until the issue is fully resolved.
Azure Lab Services - performance issues in UK South region - January 21, 2025
We are currently experiencing performance issues in the UK South region. That may cause some operations to take longer than usual to complete. This delay can result in certain virtual machines becoming stuck in the starting or stopping state. Our engineering team is actively working on mitigating the issue and has started rolling out several changes aimed at improving performance. We are also closely monitoring the region and unblocking affected virtual machines as soon as any issues are detected. For new labs, we recommend selecting a different region (other than UK South) until the issue is fully resolved. We will provide the next status update by January 24, 2025. We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and deeply appreciate your understanding and patience as we work to restore optimal performance. Thank you for choosing our services.
Azure Lab Services - Upcoming maintenance update on February 8, 2025
Hello all, On February 8, 2025, we will be updating Lab Account Service between 2:00 PM - 11:00 PM UTC. This maintenance will only affect the Lab Account Service not Lab Plan Service. Please expect downtime for most common operations like create/ update/ delete labs, start/stop virtual machines etc. The Lab Account service will be available after the update. Thank you for your patience. Refer to this blog post for the latest update on this maintenance. - Lab Services team.Cannot start VMs, template, or create a new lab
We are currently seeing an issue where we cannot start our VMs, we just see this message: "Virtual machine redeploy operation failed. Try redeploying the virtual machine. If the issue persists, consider reimaging it. For further assistance submit a support request." Redeploying does not make any difference, and we are reluctant to reimage as MS have acknowledged a bug whereby the SSD of the VM can shrink after a reimage: in any case we also cannot start our template. We cannot make a new lab: when we try we see the "gorilla holding a sign" indication that something has gone wrong on both the dashboard and template pages for that lab. Our lab plan is based in UK South. We are unable to create an alternative lab plan in another region as the portal says we are not allowed to due the retirement of ALS in 2027! Has anybody seen similar and has any suggestions?Azure Lab Services - Planned Outage - April 19, 2024
Hello Everyone, On April 19th, 2024, we will be updating our system between 1:00-10:00 pm UTC. Please expect downtime for most common operations like create/ update/ delete labs, start/stop virtual machines etc. The service will be available after the update. We will provide update on this post once the service update is complete. Thank you for your patience. - Lab Services team.Daylight savings time adjustments and Lab Schedules
With daylight savings time coming to an end for much of the world in the last few weeks, we became aware of an issue where Lab schedules could potentially start or stop at the wrong time. The fix is currently being deploy. However, customers who have worked-around the issue by adjusting their schedules by an hour may need revert their work one the fix takes effect.
