Using consumption control measures
You can put measures in place in Course Manager to control on-demand lab access and Skytap resource consumption. These measures include lazy provisioning, lab retention rules, self-service consumption, and auto-suspend and auto-shutdown.
Contents
Lazy provisioning
By default, Course Manager provisions an environment in Skytap as soon as an on-demand lab is requested. When lazy provisioning is used, Course Manager doesn’t provision the lab until the lab link is opened for the first time.
The LTI-compliant LMS integration and subscriber workflows use lazy provisioning.
Unprovisioned lifetime limit
Use an unprovisioned lifetime limit with lazy provisioning to expire lab requests when labs aren’t provisioned for a period of time.
You can configure a default unprovisioned lifetime limit using your account settings, or configure one for an individual course or lab using Course Manager tags.
Lab retention rules
There are three types of lab retention rules you can set in Course Manager: expiration, runtime limit, and rolling expiration.
You can configure default lab retention rules using your account settings, or configure them for an individual course or lab using Course Manager tags.
Expiration
Use expiration to automatically delete lab environments in Skytap and consume them in Course Manager a fixed amount of time after they are provisioned.
Notes
- If a lab template in Skytap contains a sharing portal, you can choose whether to override the sharing portal expiration configuration in Skytap with the expiration configuration in Course Manager.
- Course Manager can automatically send a warning email to a lab end user when the user's lab is about to reach its expiration.
Runtime limit
Use a runtime limit to limit the total amount of time that the lab end user can run and access the lab environment.
Notes
- If a lab template in Skytap contains a sharing portal, you can choose whether to override the sharing portal runtime limit configuration in Skytap with the runtime limit configuration in Course Manager.
- You can choose whether labs are automatically deleted in Skytap and consumed in Course Manager when the runtime limit is reached.
Rolling expiration
Use rolling expiration to automatically delete lab environments in Skytap that haven’t been run for a period of time.
Notes
- You can choose whether labs are automatically consumed in Course Manager after the rolling expiration period is reached. Labs that have been consumed can't be provisioned again.
- Course Manager can automatically send a warning email to a lab end user when the user's lab is about to reach its rolling expiration.
Self-service consumption
Use self-service consumption to allow lab end users to end a lab session from the Configuration menu and last page of the Manual in the Content Pane. When a lab end user ends a lab session, the lab environment is deleted in Skytap and consumed in Course Manager.
Notes
- You can configure default self-service consumption rules using your account settings, or configure them for an individual course or lab using Course Manager tags.
- You can customize the warning message that displays when a lab end user ends a lab session.
- You can choose whether
(Mark Done) and 
(End Lab) display as 
(Mark Done & End Lab) on the last page in the Manual once the lab end user has completed all required activities.
Auto-suspend and auto-shutdown
Use auto-suspend or auto-shutdown to automatically stop lab environments that have been idle for a period of time.
You can configure default auto-suspend or auto-shutdown rules using your account settings, or configure them for an individual course or lab using Course Manager tags.
Next step: Create a course
After you set up consumption control measures in your Course Manager account settings and tags, create a course to use as a blueprint for your on-demand lab. For instructions, see Creating a course.