Transitioning to VM Labs from Azure Lab Services: A Comprehensive Guide

Overview

Transitioning from Azure Lab Services to VM Labs can be approached in various ways, depending on your specific needs and setup. VM Labs provides tools to migrate both images and labs, making the process more streamlined. This article outlines different transition paths and helps you choose the right one for your situation. We will cover when to migrate images, when to create new images and the best strategies for migrating or creating labs.

Transition Approach: Start Fresh or Lift and Shift

Based on your current workload, you may choose to start fresh or migrate your VM images and labs into CloudLabs. The following image illustrates the level of steps involved in both approaches.

Key Factors for Transition Path

Choosing the right transition path depends on four major factors. Answering the following questions will help you determine the most suitable migration approach for your needs:

1. Custom Images: How can you create or migrate customized VM images?

   1. Start Fresh: Using VM Labs, you can easily create images, or you can also consider upgrading or changing the base image.

   2. Migrate Image: For complex or difficult-to-setup images.

2. Custom Virtual Networks: Do your labs require Custom Virtual Networks?

   1. Start Fresh or Migrate Existing Labs. Before migrating or creating labs in VM labs, you need to create a new virtual network in CloudLabs and set up peering.

3. Number of Labs: How many labs do you need to migrate or create?

   1. Start Fresh: Creating a new lab with VM Labs is easy and fast, so consider creating labs from scratch if dealing with 1-2 labs.

   2. Migrate Lab: If dealing with a large number of labs, a migration tool can migrate labs in batches.

4. User Migration: Do you need to migrate users along with the labs?

   1. Start Fresh: If comfortable adding users or importing a list of users.

   2. Migrate Lab: If you are planning to migrate a list of users.

Transition

Based on your answers to the above questions, choose one of the following transition paths:

Path 1: Creating Lab and Image from Scratch

1. If you want to set up an advanced virtual network, create a virtual network and peer, follow the instructions in the guide - Transition with Advanced Networking.

2. Create a new lab by following the instructions on Create Lab.

Path 2: Migrating Image but Creating Lab

1. If you want to set up an advanced virtual network, create a virtual network and peer, follow the instructions in the guide - Transition with Advanced Networking.

2. Migrate images using the CloudLabs image migration script. Follow the instructions on Migrate VM Images to migrate the image.

3. Enable migrated images in global lab settings - Manage Image Gallery.

4. Create a new lab using the newly migrated image by following the instructions on Create Lab.

Path 3 - Migrating Image and Migrating Labs

Labs using custom images cannot be migrated to CloudLabs before migrating the custom images to CloudLabs. When migrating labs with custom images, the migration tool searches for images with the same name in the compute gallery “<current name>-migrated” in CloudLabs and uses these images when creating the lab.

1. If you want to set up an advanced virtual network, create a virtual network and peer, follow the instructions in the guide - Transition with Advanced Networking.

2. Migrate images using the CloudLabs image migration script. Follow the instructions on Migrate VM Images to migrate the image.

3. Migrate labs using lab migration tool - Migrate Labs (Lab Plan/ Lab Account) to CloudLabs.
   *Use the “—network-name” flag with the name of the network from step 1.

Post-Migration Verification Checklist

Before proceeding further, follow the checklist below to ensure that the labs have migrated as expected:

• Verify Lab Titles: Ensure that all migrated labs appear with their corresponding titles in the Manage VM section of the CloudLabs portal.

  

• Check Lab Settings: Navigate to the Settings tab in your lab on the CloudLabs portal and verify that the lab expiry date and idle shutdown settings are correctly transferred. Learn more about lab expiration dates in the article Lab Expiry date.

  

• Check the image and VM SKU used for the lab: Navigate to the template tab in your lab on the CloudLabs portal and verify that the image name, region, and VM SKU settings are correctly transferred.

  

• Confirm User Migration: If the lab was migrated with users, go to the User tab in your lab. Check if the list of all users is visible and correct.

  

Pilot and Test Migrated Lab

Familiarization with New Concepts

Before inviting users to the newly created lab, it is important to familiarize yourself with several key changes and new features in CloudLabs VM Labs:

• VM Pool to VM Lab Instances: The concept of a VM Pool has been transitioned to VM Lab Instances, introducing new functionalities such as the lab access toggle, on-demand deployment, and pre-provisioning of labs. Learn more about Lab instances in the article Lab Instances.

• Changes in VM Usage Quota Calculation: There's a revised method for calculating VM usage quotas. Learn more about VM usage quota in the article VM Uptime Quota.

For a detailed explanation of these changes, please refer to the Key Concepts article.

Conduct a Pilot Test

1. Select Test Users:

   1. Identify one or two users to test the functionality of the lab. This helps to ensure that everything works as expected before a full-scale user migration.

      

   2. For instructions on how to add and manage these users, refer to the article Add and Manage Lab Users.

2. Access and Manage the Lab:

   1. Test users should access the VM by navigating to the My Virtual Machine section.

      

   2. Detailed guidance can be found in the article Access and Manage Lab.

3. Verify Lab Instance Status:

   1. Go to the Lab Instance tab in the Manage VM Labs section to monitor the status of lab instances, ensuring they are operating correctly.

      

   2. Detailed guidance can be found in the article Manage Lab Instances.