Lab Services
Azure Lab Services is a service that enables you to easily set up and provide on-demand access to various systems and software for any workload: teaching a class, setting up a development or test environment, or running trials with customers. Manage and scale your group’s resources in lab environments, while minimizing waste and controlling cost. Choose between the two lab types, classroom lab or devtest lab, for an experience that is tailored to your scenario.
Visit the Azure Lab Services page to learn more.
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Support auto-start from VM blade
like Auto-Shutdown we also add Auto-Start scheduler......
390 votesWe plan to add the auto-start to the regular Compute blade at some point. However, if you create the VMs in a Lab, the auto-start is already available.
Also, we do de-allocate.
Thanks for the input!
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VM automatic shutdown after some idle time.
Sometimes VM's are forgotten up and they are running idle. There should be possibility to define in Auto shutdown settings that "if these VM's are idle for x hours then shut down them."
163 votes -
Ability to move existing VM's to the TestLab
Have the ability to move an existing VM to the DevTestLab. I have several vm's that my developers use and do not want to have to Re-Create all of these machines.
156 votesDevTest Labs now supports integration with Azure Shared Image Gallery (SIG).
For the scenario you outlined above,
You can extract the images for the VMs you would like to move to a lab
Upload these images to the shared image gallery
Attach the shared image gallery to your lab
Create lab VMs from these imagesSome docs:
Upload images to a SIG: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/windows/shared-images-portal
Attach a SIG to a lab: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/lab-services/configure-shared-image-gallery
Create a lab VM from a SIG image: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/lab-services/add-vm-use-shared-image -
Attach an existing resource group to a DevTest Lab
We have existing resource groups with test environments. We would like to add them to a DevTest lab so that they are managed by the DevTest policies.
153 votesCurrently, you can configure all lab VMs to be created in an existing resource group instead of the lab creating a new RG per VM.
For ARM environments, every environment is spun up in its own RG to allow for better cost tracking user and policy management for resources created for that specific environment. -
Ability to perform scheduled shutdown based on day
Ability to perform scheduled shutdown based on day, not just time. Similar to start. We want to force shutdown all VMs on Fridays 11pm.
129 votesThanks for your suggestion! The feature is currently in our backlog, but has to be prioritized with other ones. So we don’t have an ETA at this point of time. Please don’t hesitate to vote for it if you want to see it’s done sooner.
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Calendar-based auto-shutdown/start schedule like in autoscaling for webapp.
We have holidays, weekends, last Friday of the month(release date or something like that) and during this time machines needs to be turn off, but we have nothing like that and all this sort of operations will be executed manually...
111 votes -
Want ability to take and manage snapshots
often when working in a lab environment / testing software , it saves a lot of time being able to take a snapshot / rollback to a good known point so that you don't have to start from scratch.
96 votesSnapshot as Hyper-V is not supported in Azure yet, but we are working with the relevant teams to get something equivalent. We don’t have an ETA at this point. Please stay tuned. Thanks!
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70 votes
We plan to add the auto-start to the regular Compute blade at some point. However, if you create the VMs in a Lab, the auto-start is already available.
Thanks for the input!
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Deploy a OS template with attached data discs
Sometimes it is very necessary, when to deploy an os template which already attached data discs. For example: We deploy some SharePoint or SQL server in a testlab and we need some performance.
59 votesThanks again for the feedback! We currently have a feature in the backlog that allows you to create a VM with an attached disk at the same time. We still need to prioritize it, so there is no ETA at this point of time. If you want to see it sooner, please don’t hesitate to vote this idea!
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Configure RDP file settings at lab or VM level
We need the ability at the lab and maybe even VM level to be able to configure what is in the RDP file that is downloaded. We do use the RDP gateway in the lab and it is creating the RDP file but we also want to configure it so that we can add\update settings such as "audiocapturemode", etc. Right now our developers have to modify the RDP file as some of them turn on monitor spanning, audio capture mode, etc. I would like to configure it at the lab level and allow individual developers to update it at the…
55 votesThank you for your feedback. This feature is added to our backlog. We will update this post once we have a time line for this feature.
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Allow secrets at the lab level
Right now secrets are only on per user level. It would be great if Contributors and Owners could define secrets at the lab level that can be used along side user secrets.
My current use case is that I don't want all of the lab users to know the domain password when using the Join Domain artifact. Right now I have to add the password to their key vault. The default permissions for their personal key vault allows them to view the value of the secret. I think I can lock this down, but then there is another manual intervention…
49 votesWe do have this feature on our backlog, but do not have a timeline for it as yet.
We will update the status as soon as we have an ETA. -
49 votes
Thanks for submitting the idea!
We are waiting on some dependencies before we can get started with this. The feature has been in our backlog without an ETA yet. for those who want to see this feature sooner, please vote for it. -
Allow other artifact repositories (bitbucket.com, gitlab.com, private gitlab)
We, like many other organizations, use private git repositories. This can have many reasons, such as single sign-on etc. Our repository of choice is a self-hosted gitlab-instance (running in Azure, btw), fully integrated with ADFS for security. Good stuff.
It would be nice if the Artifact Repository integration was more generic, and not specific to GitHub. This would allow users to chose their hosting provider, it be a public solution (e.g. github.com, gitlab.com, bitbucket.com) or a private solution (e.g gitlab.example.com).
Most, if not all, git repository managers support the idea of a "deployment key", which is a ssh-key typically used…
46 votesThanks for your feedback! As more further investigate, the DevTest Labs supports VSTS Git and GitHub today. I’ve added this into the backlog. Given different Git repo offers different client for Labs to use and connect to, it’d be helpful if you could share with us which one you want to support first, so that the Labs can support them one by one. Thanks!
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42 votes
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Expand shutdown options...
Expand shutdown options...
1. Have option for day of week shutdown instead of just the time each day. This way the machine could be turned off Friday evenings.
2. Have an auto on option.
This way vm machines may be powered down for times of inactivity, but turn on prior to team starting work to use it.
3. Have the ability to delay the shutdown process by x time if the machine is currently in use.40 votesThanks for your feedback. I have added the first ask to the backlog. I will update this post for further updates on the ETA.
Currently we have auto start option for Lab VMs and we would be extending this functionality for compute VMs at some point. You can also provide an email address or webhook for receiving a shutdown notification that allows you to delay or skip the shutdown in case the your Lab VM is in use. -
apply artifacts in bulk to existing lab VMs
Right now the only way to apply artifacts to already deployed VMs is by going to each machine and navigating to artifact blade and selecting artifacts. This is time consuming for labs with many machines. Would like option to bulk apply artifacts to multiple machines. The UI could support checkbox list of existing VMs in lab. User selects one or more machines to apply artifact against.
38 votesThanks for submitting the idea! The feature has been in our backlog without an ETA yet. For people who want to see the support sooner, please don’t hesitate to vote for it!
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Support different auto-start time for different VMs
Having one time per day for all machines to start at is not enough. For example I have a few machines that connect to a share on the other machine at startup, so I NEED this one machine to come up slightly earlier
37 votesThanks for submitting the idea! After the review, we’ve got this into our backlog. We don’t have an ETA at this point of time, because we need to prioritize it with other features in the backlog. For people who need the same thing, please don’t hesitate to vote for it!
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Auto Shutdown warning
Change it so it initiates the windows shutdown command with a delay and notification on it; eg shutdown /s /t 900 /c "Azure Auto Shutdown"
Then if you are actively using the machine the user will be warned (a popup will appear) AND the user have the option to cancel the shutdown ("shutdown /a").
Also having the ability to send an email notification would be helpful.
28 votesThanks for the feedback.
Currently a user receives an auto shutdown notification either via email or a webhook which also includes the ability to wither delay or skip shutdown. The feature for having in machine notification via popups is in the backlog with no ETA.
For anyone who want to see this happen, please don’t hesitate to vote for it.
I will update this post for further updates. -
Allow using the VM DSC Extensions in DevTest Labs
Allow the Azure VM DSC Extension to be used in Azure DTL.
26 votesThanks for submitting the idea! We’ve added this into our backlog, and it will be prioritized with all the other items. For people who want to see it sooner, please don’t hesitate to vote for it. Thanks!
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Integration with OnPremise TFS
For customers who did not migrated their projects/build to VSO- we need some integration tool to publish artifacts.
Right now I see only one workaround- publish artifacts to VSO first and after make a deployment, but it's looks like workaround and not like a normal solution
22 votesThanks for the feedback! Integration with on-prem TFS is in our backlog, although we don’t have an ETA to share yet. Meanwhile, could you please provide more details at which point you want to publish your build artifacts to a Lab VM? There are a couple of solutions based on the scenarios. One scenario is baking the latest build into a VM template in the Lab as part of the CI pipeline. We are currently working on the cmdlets which allows you to use when authoring a post-build task. Another scenario is to access the build from within a running Lab VM. This requires the network configuration to connect the Lab with your on-prem environments. Azure has provided a couple of options including Express Route, site-to-site, and point-to-site, etc. Thanks!
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