Azure for Students - Anyone use this in their schools?

[Tefters]

Afternoon all,

 

Does anyone out there know if their ICT teachers use the free Azure for Students – Free Account Credit | Microsoft Azure  with their students?

We have a new ICT teacher that wants to start doing SQL DB, C++ and other such things which basically need local admin access on a computer otherwise it's a right ballache compared to our normal applocker / heaviliy GP'd machines.

I was looking at going down the route of creating local VM's in our infrastructure as I have plenty of resources and shoving these VM's in an isolated VLAN with specific machine access through our firewall but this looks like a better approach and more in line with the modern workings, unlike my ageing knowledge where I know of and use Azure in a limited capacity!

[steve]

Not a school, but we use it with Computer Science students at the uni. I don't think we pre-deploy anything for the students, just give it to them to test / build.

 

In effect each student gets a student subscription, you can view / access them all as a global admin, and might be possible to setup policy to grant a teacher access to them all - but the student will be the subscription owner and may be able to block policy.

 

You might be able to automate the creation of resources for students, but it would be a bit of a steep learning curve if you aren't into infrastructure as code and Azure already.

[garethEds]

Sounds interesting - any links or advice @steve on where to go to set this up?

[Tefters]

I just tested tonight with a dummy student account and my GA account.

 

Students own their own resources and GA has view access.  Its completely isolated away from your core infrastructure and they get access to a lot of free stuff. While not very powerful spec-wise it is enough to learn basics around Azure SQL, web apps and basic VM work. I don't see it being a replacement for the need our current head of ICT has which is basically a machine that students have full admin and no proxy so they can program unhindered in Python, C#, Visual Studio and other such computer science tasks (sixth form).

 

Azure labs was going to be the perfect environment in my mind for that but thats now being discontinued and I dont want something thats going to cost an arm and a leg for the sake of 10 to 15 students and a teacher.

 

I have it nailed down to 3 possible scenarios:

 

1. Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) - Basically RDS in the cloud...
2. Cloudlabs VM Labs - Looking costly...
3. Local VM Infrastructure - My 2 node S2D cluster has oodles of compute and storage available and I can spin up VM's for them. Problems i forsee though is that I would have to image them all and set them up for RDP so the students and teacher couldn't do OS install.

[steve]

If I recall correctly, you'll need an Azure enterprise tenant for your org. This will need Entra ID and a subscription associated to it.

 

There's a process you have to go through to get you org recognised as an educational institute to be able to access the offer.

 

Students need an institutional email address to sign up. So you'll probably need Entra ID account for all student users (might have this already if you use M365).

 

Azure for Students for University IT Admins | IT Should Just Work

 

Microsoft Learn for Educators Program Overview | Microsoft Learn

 

[steve]

3 minutes ago, Tefters said:

Azure labs was going to be the perfect environment in my mind for that but thats now being discontinued and I dont want something thats going to cost an arm and a leg for the sake of 10 to 15 students and a teacher.

 

I have it nailed down to 3 possible scenarios:

 

1. Azure Virtual Desktop (AVD) - Basically RDS in the cloud...
2. Cloudlabs VM Labs - Looking costly...
3. Local VM Infrastructure - My 2 node S2D cluster has oodles of compute and storage available and I can spin up VM's for them. Problems i forsee though is that I would have to image them all and set them up for RDP so the students and teacher couldn't do OS install.

Yeah, shame about Azure Labs. We've been looking at DaaS with Virtual Desktops: Simple, Secure, and Affordable | Apporto
Still early days though so no feedback on the service yet.

[Tefters]

47 minutes ago, steve said:

If I recall correctly, you'll need an Azure enterprise tenant for your org. This will need Entra ID and a subscription associated to it.

 

There's a process you have to go through to get you org recognised as an educational institute to be able to access the offer.

 

Students need an institutional email address to sign up. So you'll probably need Entra ID account for all student users (might have this already if you use M365).

 

Azure for Students for University IT Admins | IT Should Just Work

 

Microsoft Learn for Educators Program Overview | Microsoft Learn

 

 

Well ahead on all this. Sorry I should of said when I say "Azure knowledge is limited" I know and use Azure/Entra along with all the M365 admin centre services daily, just I haven't gone as far as creating any virtual networks, VM's, VPN's or migrating any other services into it other than hooking up basic application ID hookups for other online platforms as we still have a very healthy on-site 2 node cluster going strong on Hyper-V. Same goes for Intune, know the basics but I have a very healthy SCCM setup on a single site so no real need to make the push yet.

We are fully M365 licensed with everyone have A3 licensing with P2 licensing etc...

 

I am a former Shitrix certified XenApp and Desktop admin as well but that was like 10 years ago and glad to see the back of it, thin clients still make my skin crawl.

 

Looks like WAC in a gateway setup while using RBAC and AD groups for specific host VM access is the answer.  Will add this to my testing plan for a few days time.👍

Edited October 1, 2025 by Tefters