General Lab Settings

Overview

This section focuses on managing lab expiration and auto-shutdown settings within CloudLabs VM Labs.

By the end of this documentation, you should be able to:

• Understand and update the lab expiration date.

• Configure idle shutdown settings.

• Update virtual machine image and quota per user.

Update Lab Expiration Setting

Every lab in CloudLabs VM Labs is created with a predefined expiration date. This specifies when the lab and all associated instances will be deleted automatically. This deletion occurs exactly at 00:00 UTC on the day after the expiration date. To know more refer to Lab Expiry Date.

To update lab expiry settings, follow the given steps:

1. Navigate to the Settings tab of your lab.

   

2. Select the Calendar icon (1), input the expiration date under Lab Expiry Date (2), and click on Submit (3). Your lab will automatically be scheduled to expire on the date you have set. Note that you can change this expiry date anytime before the mentioned expiry date.

   

Update Automatic Shutdown Settings

Whenever a VM is running, it incurs costs, regardless of whether it is actively in use. To reduce unnecessary expenses, you can activate various auto-shutdown features. CloudLabs VM Labs offers three distinct auto-shutdown policies to help manage and reduce these costs efficiently.

To know more about this setting, navigate to the Virtual Machine Shutdown and Disconnect Settings article.

To enable and configure automatic shutdown settings,

1. Navigate to the Lab Settings tab in your lab.

   

   1. Shut down idle virtual machine (1): This will determine idleness by tracking the lab user's keyboard and mouse interactions.

   2. Shut down virtual machine when users disconnect (2): With this setting, VMs will shut down automatically when lab users disconnect from the VM.

   3. Shut down virtual machine when users do not connect (3): This ensures that if a user initiates a VM but fails to connect within the set time, the VM will automatically shut down.

      

2. These values will be defaulted to the values mentioned in the Shutdown & Disconnect Settings in the Lab Settings section at the global level. You can input the value (1), enable the required auto-shutdown settings that are appropriate for your scenario, and select Submit (2).

   

Understand the Supported Virtual Machine Distributions for Automatic Shutdown.

Restrict VM Quota Per User

You can also change the virtual machine quota per user for the whole lab, including the existing users, from here. Follow the steps below to change the quota per user of a lab.

1. Navigate to the Lab Settings of the lab.

   

2. Setup VM Quota Per User

   1. Check the checkbox Restrict VM Quota Per User (1) to enable the quota restriction.

   2. Enter the desired number of hours (2). This will set the total per-user VM quota for the lab.

      Note that changing this will also adjust the per-user quota for existing users.

   3. Click on the Submit (3) button to save your changes.

      

      To learn more, refer to VM Uptime Quota.

Next Steps

In this article, you learned about the general settings of a lab.

• IAM

• Lab Schedule

• Decommission Lab