Azure Lab Services is a cloud based classroom enabling students and instructors to access virtual machines (VM's) for lab assignments within iSchool courses. If you are an instructor for an iSchool (IST) course and are interested in having a VM provisioned for your students, please contact iSchool's Technology Services team by emailing ischoolit@ot.syr.edu.
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- After you connect to your lab template, configure this template machine for your course. Any changes you make within this machine can be 'published' to the whole class --creating a base template image for your course.
- After you have made your changes, stop your running template by selecting the 'stop template' button in the toolbar.
When your template has been configured and stopped, you can then publish the updated template to your class. This will delete all existing student machines and deploy a new set of machines based on the latest, published, template. The publish button is on the tool bar. Publishing a template, in a course of 30 students, takes roughly 1 hour.
Warning Once you publish, you can't unpublish. - On the Publish template page, enter the number of virtual machines you want to create in the lab (based on your class roster), and then select Publish. You can tell how many VMs you need by looking at the Lab capacity information.
Wait until the publishing is complete and then switch to the Virtual machines pool page by selecting Virtual machines on the left menu or by selecting Virtual machines tile. Confirm that you see virtual machines that are in Unassigned state. These VMs are not assigned to students yet. They should be in Stopped state. You can start a student VM, connect to the VM, stop the VM, and delete the VM on this page. You can start them in this page or let your students start the VMs.
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Add users Students to the labLab
- By default we will add all students from your class roster. You can add/remove as needed.
Select Users on the left menu. By default, the Restrict access option is enabled. When this setting is on, a user can't register with the lab even if the user has the registration link unless the user is in the list of users. Only users in the list can register with the lab by using the registration link you send. In this procedure, you add users to the list. Alternatively, you can turn off Restrict access, which allows users to register with the lab as long as they have the registration link.
Select Add users on the toolbar, and then select Add by email address.
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| You will see names of users in the list after they are registered to the lab. |
Sending invitation emails to
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Students
- Switch to the Users view if you are not on the page already, and select Invite all on the toolbar.
- On the Send invitation by email page, enter an optional message, and then select Send. The email automatically includes the registration link. You can get this registration link by selecting ... (ellipsis) on the toolbar, and Registration link.
- You see the status of invitation in the Users list. The status should change to Sending and then to Sent on <date>.
Interacting with Student VMs
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Please reach out to iSchool Tech Services for the follownig actions:
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- Template VMs incur cost when running, so ensure that the template VM is shutdown when you don’t need it to be running.
- Automatic shutdown & disconnect options should alway be checked and set at 15 minutes.
- Please reach out to ischoolit@ot.syr.edu with any issues or questions regarding Azure Lab Services.