Lab Environment Setup¶
Every lab in this curriculum supports two environment models. Pick the one that matches your situation before starting.
Option A: Customer hardware (real Azure Local cluster)¶
For students or teams with access to a physical Azure Local cluster.
Prerequisites:
- Azure Local cluster deployed and Arc-registered
- Azure subscription connected to the cluster
- Contributor or higher access on the cluster resource group
- Credentials for a cluster node (local admin or domain account)
Use this when: the student is already an operator on a production or pilot cluster, or the training is delivered on-site at a customer location with their hardware.
Option B: Provided lab building solutions¶
When customer hardware isn't available, the workshop provides Bicep / Terraform templates that build a complete lab environment in Azure on demand. There are two deployment patterns:
B.1 — Student-deployed (self-guided / on-demand)¶
The student deploys their own lab environment by running a provided Bicep template against their own Azure subscription. Used for the on-demand AI tutor classes and the self-paced video curriculum.
- Templates live under
labs/iac/ - Each module has its own template variant where applicable
- A shared base environment at
labs/iac/shared/provisions the common substrate; module-specific templates layer on top - Includes a
cleanup.ps1per template so resources can be destroyed when the lab ends
Student prerequisites:
- Azure subscription (their own) with contributor access
azCLI installed and authenticated- Quota for the workshop's required VM SKUs (typically
Standard_E16s_v5or similar) bicepCLI available (az bicep install)
B.2 — Moderator-deployed (instructor-led, in-person)¶
For in-person workshops, the lab moderator deploys one shared environment (or a per-participant batch) ahead of time. Students consume the environment without managing infrastructure.
The same templates power this — the moderator runs them in batch with a participant-count parameter, distributes credentials, and runs cleanup at the end of the workshop.
Moderator prerequisites:
- A dedicated workshop Azure subscription with quota for
participantCount × VM SKU - Service principal or managed identity with Contributor on the workshop RG
- The shared base template (
labs/iac/shared/lab-environment.bicep) plus the module-specific templates the workshop will cover
Lab Index¶
Lab guides are mapped 1:1 to modules where applicable. See the individual module pages for the lab content.
| Module | Hands-on Type |
|---|---|
| 02 — Deployment | Lab — deploy cluster |
| 03 — Management | Lab — Portal/CLI/WAC tour |
| 04 — Azure Arc Deep Dive | Demo |
| 05 — Compute | Lab — Arc VM + Bicep |
| 06 — Storage | Lab — S2D volumes, ReSync |
| 07 — Core Networking | Lab — Network ATC, RDMA |
| 08 — SDN | Lab — SDN deploy, SLB |
| 09 — Security & Compliance | Lab — BitLocker, Policy, Defender |
| 10 — Observability & Monitoring | Lab — Monitor, dashboards |
| 11 — Troubleshooting | Lab/Demo — break-fix |
| 12 — BCDR | Lab — ASR, Backup, DR test |
| 13 — Day-2 Operations | Lab — Update Manager, LCM |
| 14 — AKS | Lab — deploy AKS cluster |
| 15 — AVD | Lab — host pool, FSLogix |
| 16 — IoT Operations | Lab — IoT Operations deploy |
| 17 — AI Foundry Local | Lab — Foundry Local deploy |
| 18 — Migration | Lab/Demo — VMware migration |
IaC templates for each module live in labs/iac/<module>/.