RosettaHub™ vs Azure Lab Services
Azure Lab Services is retiring
Move to a multi-cloud platform
Microsoft retires Azure Lab Services on 28 June 2027. RosettaHub is a full multi-cloud platform: run classrooms, training sandboxes, HPC, Jupyter notebooks, big data, Kubernetes, and governed self-service on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, or any cloud that fits the workload. At actual cloud prices.
Why teams switch to RosettaHub
More flexibility
Any instance type, any image size, any cloud provider. VMs, containers, Kubernetes, HPC, big data, not just templated VMs.
Lower costs
Per-second billing at actual cloud prices. Azure Lab Services charges 2-5x markup on infrastructure. RosettaHub charges none. Save 38-78% on equivalent configurations.
Better experience
Single portal for everything. No publishing delays. Stop and restart VMs without losing data. Share with users, groups, or organisations.
Not locked to Azure
Run on AWS, Azure, Google Cloud or other providers from the same platform. Move if you need to, and take the same operations with you.
Side by side
| Capability | Azure Lab Services | RosettaHub |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud support | Azure only | AWS, Azure, GCP, and more |
| Environment types | Templated VMs only | VMs, containers, Jupyter, RStudio, HPC, big data, Kubernetes |
| Instance types | 8 fixed configurations | Any type from any cloud |
| Image size limit | 128 GB | No limit |
| Stop and restart | No: stopping loses all data | Yes: data preserved |
| Billing | Per hour, 2-5x cloud price markup | Per second, actual cloud prices |
| Spot instances | No | Yes: 60-90% savings with automatic recovery |
| Hard budget caps | No | Yes: enforced in real time |
| Real-time cost tracking | No: 24-hour delay | Yes |
| Cloud console access | No | Yes: sandboxed federated access |
| Share environments | No | Yes: fine-grained sharing with users, groups, and organisations |
| Status | Retiring June 2027 | Serving customers since 2016 |
Save 38-78% on infrastructure
Azure Lab Services charges 2-5x markup on cloud infrastructure. With RosettaHub, you pay actual cloud prices with no markup.
| Configuration | Azure Lab Services | RosettaHub | Saving |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small: 2 cores, 3.5 GB | $0.20/hr | $0.046/hr | 77% |
| Medium: 4 cores, 7 GB | $0.42/hr | $0.092/hr | 78% |
| Large: 8 cores, 16 GB | $0.70/hr | $0.232/hr | 67% |
| Small GPU: 6 cores, 56 GB | $1.39/hr | $0.79/hr | 43% |
| Medium GPU: 12 cores, 112 GB | $4.08/hr | $1.81/hr | 56% |
With Spot instances, costs reduce by a further 60-90%.
Beyond education
Azure Lab Services was designed for classroom labs. RosettaHub is a complete cloud management platform used across industries.
Universities
Virtual labs for students, classroom management, per-student sandboxes. Serving universities since 2016.
Training providers
Bootcamps, certification courses, workshops. Deploy environments for hundreds of participants at once.
Development teams
Sandboxed dev environments, GPU workstations, test environments. Governed and budget-controlled.
Research labs
HPC clusters, big data, reproducible computational environments. Grant-aligned budgets.
Migrate in three steps
1
Set up your organisation
Register on RosettaHub, connect your cloud accounts, configure your team structure and budgets.
2
Recreate your environments
Build templates matching your current lab setups. Choose containers, VMs, or virtual desktops. Test and snapshot.
3
Invite your users
Onboard users individually or in bulk. They launch environments in one click, with no cloud expertise needed.
Don't wait until 2027
Start your migration today. Book a call and we'll help you plan the move.
Common questions
When exactly is Azure Lab Services retiring?
Microsoft retires Azure Lab Services on 28 June 2027. New sign-ups have already closed. Existing customers keep access until that date, after which lab accounts, lab plans and labs are no longer available.
What is the migration actually like?
Three steps: connect your cloud accounts and set up your organisation structure and budgets, rebuild your lab environments as templates and test them, then onboard your users individually or in bulk. Participants launch environments in one click with no cloud expertise needed.
Are we locked to one cloud afterwards?
No. Labs run on AWS, Azure or Google Cloud from the same platform, and the operations are the same on each, so moving a course between providers does not mean learning a different system.
Why is it cheaper?
Labs run in your own cloud accounts at your own rates, billed per second, with no infrastructure margin added on top. Machines also stop when nobody is using them without losing the work, so the time between sessions is not billed.