The next two articles are going to focus on some of the more alternative services in Azure. We all know that some of the top cloud vendors now provide services that are not limited to the underlying computing resources, such as servers, storage, and networks. Some serverless, K8S and other things are standard equipment. It may be relatively new a few years ago. If there is no one now, it can basically be excluded from the mainstream scope. And the service we are going to talk about today belongs to the small group. Many, few people may have heard of it
What I’m going to talk about this time is actually a service about lab provided in Azure. The so-called lab refers to the meaning of hands-on experiments. People who often participate in training may know that some trainings provide hands-on experiment environments or when they participate in teaching, In order to have a better experience, the course will also provide experimental environments. The preparation, configuration and recycling of these experimental environments is actually quite troublesome, especially if it also involves the need to configure permissions for the college to avoid mutual influence or restrictions The operations that students can perform are actually something that requires some thought
And Azure actually provides some services in this area, of course, it is actually limited to Global Azure.
There are actually two services related to the experiment in Azure
Azure Dev Test Lab
Azure Lab Service
In fact, the focus, billing method, management method, etc. are different between the two
Azure Development Test Lab -Through this service, you can quickly set up an environment for your team (for example, a development environment or a test environment in the cloud). Lab owners create labs, provision Windows or Linux virtual machines, install necessary software and tools, and provide them to lab users. Lab users connect to virtual machines (VMs) in the lab and use these virtual machines for daily work and short-term projects. After users start to use the resources in the laboratory, the laboratory administrator can analyze the cost and usage of multiple laboratories, and set overall strategies to optimize the organization or team costs.
Azure Lab Service -Use this service to create a managed lab type. Currently, classroom labs are the only type of hosted lab supported by Azure Labs Services. From running VMs to handling errors and expanding infrastructure, the service itself can handle all infrastructure management of the hosted lab type. After the IT administrator creates a laboratory account in Azure Lab Service, the instructor can quickly set up a laboratory for his class, specify the number and types of VMs that need to be practiced in the class, and add users to the class. After the user is registered in the class, the user can access the VM to do class exercises.
Here are some differences between the two
| Features | Type of laboratory hosted | Development test laboratory |
| Management of Azure infrastructure in the lab. | Automatically managed by the service | User management |
| Built-in resilience to infrastructure problems | Automatic processing by the service | User management |
| Subscription Management | The service handles resource allocation issues in the Microsoft subscription of the support service. Scaling is handled automatically by the service. | Manage yourself in your own Azure subscription. Subscription does not automatically expand. |
| Azure Resource Manager deployment in the lab | unavailable | Available |
From this point, it can be seen that Dev Test Lab is characterized by strong autonomy, users can manage the underlying resources by themselves, and the created environment is also tangible for users. There are many usage scenarios and are suitable for teaching experiments. Various methods such as internal testing
Lab Service is a SaaS-based application. The usage scenarios are completely inclined to foreign teaching. The underlying resources created are not visible to users. It is easier to use, but the relative manageability is less.
You can also use the actual environment to feel it
Let’s take a look at Dev Test Lab this time. First of all, the cost
cost
The DevTest Lab product itself does not charge, but the virtual machine, storage and other computing resources created during the experiment are charged according to the normal standard.
deploy
The process of deploying Dev Test Lab is actually very simple. For example, if you want to set up an environment for a course now, the need is to give 5 students an account each, so that they can create a virtual machine in the dev test lab during the course. For teaching, this virtual machine needs to be pre-configured with many components, and in this process, we need to limit the number of virtual machines created by students, optional images, etc.
Does it sound troublesome? If you use traditional Azure to do it, some of them will be fun, and some of the requirements are basically very difficult to achieve, but in Dev Test Lab, there are actually ready-made functions.
First, you need to create a Devtest Lab account, which is equivalent to the container hosting the experimental environment
You can configure the time of automatic power on and off, here you can only set automatic power off, after creation, even automatic power on can also be set
As mentioned before, users have strong manageability of Devtest Lab, so virtual networks, etc. can be selected by themselves, and isolate lab resources can also be set. In fact, the underlying storage, etc., are protected through service endpoints.
After the creation is complete, you can actually see that the bottom layer is just such a few resources, storage, virtual network, and key vault. I don’t need to say what they are doing. As long as you know the purpose of these services, you can basically guess
After the creation is complete, don't rush to use it, you can first take a look at the management strategy we can set in the devtest lab
In fact, some common strategies can be found, such as the number of virtual machines that each user can create
Automatic switch time
Allowed image
You can also pre-configure some fixed templates through the formula, and specify some specific parameters and software to be installed during the deployment process. It is similar to a custom image, but there are some differences. For details, please refer to the official website document
Here is a brief look, the image of the base, username and password can be used in the process of formula creation
The size and so on are all combined together. It is completely possible for students to create a fixed template for them to use. If there is a need for built-in things in the VM, it can also be used in conjunction with a custom image, taking care of all aspects.
In fact, it can be seen from these that dev test lab is a service that places great emphasis on teaching and testing. Some specific user needs are actually met in this service, and you can try it next!