Question 1

Can students use their own laptops and tablets?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Students reach a full Windows desktop through the Atlas user portal in any modern browser, or through the Windows App on their own device, with no installation required on a personal machine.

Question 2

How does Atlas handle the start-of-term surge?

Accepted Answer

Autoscaling and Adaptive Density™ bring capacity online as demand rises, while Adaptive Quota™ checks regional Azure quota before provisioning so a large scale-up does not fail part way through.

Question 3

Can we run licensed lab software like statistics, GIS, or design suites?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Atlas manages standard AVD session hosts, so any Windows application you are licensed to run works. Image Management lets you maintain a separate versioned image per course or lab so licences and dependencies stay separated.

Question 4

Can we charge cloud costs back to individual faculties?

Accepted Answer

Host Pool Cost Tracking reports Azure compute cost per pool, so if you organise pools by faculty, course, or grant, the spend is already attributed when the chargeback conversation happens.

Question 5

What happens over the summer vacation?

Accepted Answer

Auto On/Off scheduling and idle shutdown reduce the estate to a small baseline outside term time, so you stop paying for teaching capacity during the months nobody is teaching.

Education Virtual Desktops