Microsoft is planning to retire another one of its services, but the good news, at least for current users, is that it won't happen for quite a while. This week, the company quietly revealed its plans to shut down Azure Lab Services.
If you are unfamiliar Azure Lab Services, it allows users with an Azure subscription to set up a lab plan and create a lab for a number of different functions. The service was designed to allow people to make labs for a class, a hackathon, for training sessions, or to just experiment with ideas.
In this week's announcement on its upcoming retirement, Microsoft said that a number of the other virtual desktop services that it offers, such as Azure Virtual Desktop, Windows 365, Azure DevTest Labs, and Microsoft Dev Box, may offer the same requirements as Azure Lab Services. If for some reason those Microsoft services don't match a Azure Lab Services' needs, this support page also mentions some third-party replacements, including Apporto, CloudLabs by Spektra Systems, Nerdio Manager for Enterprise (NME), and Skillable.
Microsoft ended access for new subscribers to Azure Lab Services last week, on July 15. However, current lab subscribers can continue to use the service until June 28, 2027. Any existing labs or lab plans can also continue to be accessed on that date.
Microsoft's support page added:
Azure subscriptions that have actively used Azure Lab Services between July 2023 and July 2024 will be considered existing customers and allowed to create a new lab plan. New lab accounts cannot be created.
Microsoft will continue to fully support the service for those current subscribers until its retirement. Also, those current Azure Lab Services customers will still be able to get access to their Azure compute gallery, including any images that might be stored, after the retirement of the service.
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