Create my Azure lab

In the pilot’s seat

Lots of buttons, no autopilot. On Azure you create everything yourself, so you name it, tag it and keep an eye on the fuel bill. Nobody will do it for you.

Vecteezy

You create the Resource Group yourself and get going. The e-mail at the end of this page is a declaration, not a request for permission.

A Resource Group is the folder that will hold your entire lab: deleting it takes everything inside with it in one go, which is why a lab can be closed in a single action. The other Azure terms used here are gathered in the short Azure glossary.

Create the Resource Group

Three steps in the Azure portal, once per lab.

1. Choose the subscription: Qim info Labs in almost every case. The second one is only justified if the expected bill makes the lab unreasonable on the internal subscription. See The two subscriptions.

2. Create the Resource Group. The form asks for the subscription, the name and the region on the same screen. Four regions are open: switzerlandnorth by default, westeurope if a service is missing in Switzerland. Check that service’s availability before sizing anything: Azure products available by region.

3. Fill in the mandatory tags: owner, projectName and creationDate in dd.MM.YYYY format. Without these three, creation is refused. Add expirationDate: it doesn’t block anything, but its absence is flagged during the audit. Fill them in on every resource created in the RG as well, network interface and disk included. See Naming and tags.

Declare the lab

Three pieces of information, one e-mail to lab@qiminfo.ch. They’re used for tracking, the monthly review and the expiry reminders at D-14 and D-7. You don’t wait for any reply to get started.

Your declaration

You are the lab owner: the e-mail is sent from your address.

Resource Group name

Purpose

Planned end date

Three months at most, ideally the value of your expirationDate tag.

E-mail preview

To

lab@qiminfo.ch

Subject

Azure lab declaration

Hello,

I am declaring a new Azure lab in the lab tenant.

Resource Group: (to be completed)
Purpose: (to be completed)
Planned end date: (to be completed)

I confirm: no client, personal or sensitive data, and no production use.

Thanks,

Fill in the Resource Group, the purpose and the planned end date.

Open the declaration in my mail appCopy the text

Further reading:Naming and tags·Subscriptions, regions and network·My responsibilities

Deploy in it

A frontend, no domain name

Already-built HTML, CSS and JavaScript, no server to administer. A Storage Account is enough, and the URL comes with it.

Allow 15 minutes and a few cents a month.

Deploy a static website →

An application with its resources

A back end to run, a database to populate, dependencies to install. One VM, with the database on that same VM.

Allow one hour and a budget to keep an eye on.

Deploy an application →

Not up for negotiation

No real customer, personal or sensitive data in a lab. No production extract “just to test”, not even a single query. Generate a dataset, or anonymize before loading.

Details on subscriptions, regions and network rules: subscriptions, regions and network. Once the lab is up and running: my responsibilities.