All Azure labs live in a tenant dedicated to labs, separate from production or engagement subscriptions. Each lab has its own Resource Group, which keeps things clearly isolated and makes cleanup at end of life easy.
Choosing between them is not a technical matter but a question of what you expect from the lab: to last, or to consume.
Qim info Labs |
Microsoft Azure Sponsorship |
|
|---|---|---|
| Nature | Internal subscription, funded by Qim info. | Subscription backed by the Microsoft partnership. |
| Choose it for | The usual case: a normal-sized lab, and any lab that has to last or be renewed. | A need whose cost or consumption exceeds what an ordinary lab justifies. |
| Durability | Guaranteed. The subscription doesn’t go away; your anchor point stays the same from one year to the next. | Not guaranteed. Capacity depends on the partnership and can be reduced or withdrawn. |
| Catalog | The usual Azure services, in the open regions. | The same, minus whatever the partnership framework doesn’t allow. |
Four regions are open to labs. Any other is denied by the Azure Policies, unless an exception is approved by the administrators.
| Region | Identifier | What to know |
|---|---|---|
| Switzerland North | switzerlandnorth |
Zurich. Along with Switzerland West, the narrowest catalog of the four: recent services and specialized machine sizes (GPUs in particular) are often missing. |
| Switzerland West | switzerlandwest |
Geneva. Same restriction, and a smaller region. Some machine sizes are missing there too. |
| West Europe | westeurope |
Netherlands. Large, long-established region, with the best availability of the four. The useful fallback when a service doesn’t exist in Switzerland. |
| Sweden Central | swedencentral |
Sweden. Somewhere in between, with its own list of exceptions. |
No Azure region offers the full catalog. A service, machine size or quota available in one may be missing in another, and these gaps shift as Microsoft opens and retires things. The only reliable list is Microsoft’s own, to check before sizing: Azure products available by region.
On both subscriptions, you have the rights to create your Resource Group. No creation by the administrators, no prior approval. You then declare the lab with an e-mail to lab@qiminfo.ch, which feeds the tracking and the expiry reminders. The full procedure is on create my Azure lab.
Each lab has a dedicated VNet. The peering rule distinguishes two cases.
This lab / production boundary is a structural guarantee. The consultant can’t bypass it, not even temporarily for a test.
Users, groups and app registrations don’t live in your Resource Group but in the directory, and follow a different process, open and with no e-mail. See Entra ID.
Azure lab resources live in a tenant dedicated to labs, separate from production and client work. This tenant holds two subscriptions: Qim info Labs, the permanent one, and Microsoft Azure Sponsorship, the partner one.
Qim info Labs by default: it depends on no external condition, so a lab that has to last or be renewed stays in the same place. Microsoft Azure Sponsorship for a need whose cost or consumption goes beyond what an ordinary lab justifies: it has more capacity, but that capacity comes from the Microsoft partnership and can be reduced or withdrawn from one year to the next.
The Microsoft Azure Sponsorship subscription is governed by the Microsoft partnership: some resources, services or quotas may be unavailable there, and this is not an internal governance decision. If this blocks you, switch back to Qim info Labs or write to lab@qiminfo.ch.
Each lab is isolated in its own Resource Group.
In the lab subscription, you have the rights needed to create your own Resource Group: no creation by administrators, no approval to wait for. In return, its compliance (tags, region, duration, cost) is your responsibility from the very first resource.
A declaration e-mail to lab@qiminfo.ch when you create the Resource Group is all it takes: it feeds tracking, the monthly review and end-date reminders. It is not a request for permission, there is nothing to wait for before you start.
Four Azure regions are open to labs: Switzerland North, Switzerland West, West Europe and Sweden Central. Any other region is denied, unless a technical exception is approved.
The four open regions do not offer the same catalogue: a service, VM size or quota available in one may be missing in another. Check that what you need is available before sizing the lab, and pick the region accordingly.
One dedicated VNet per lab. Peering between two lab VNets is allowed. No peering is allowed between a lab VNet and a production VNet, nor between the lab and production subscriptions.
