FAQ
Implementation
Section titled “Implementation”How long does an implementation typically take?
Section titled “How long does an implementation typically take?”Educational institutions typically complete the initial installation in somewhere between a few weeks and a few months. Afterwards, the scale-up is performed at their own pace, typically taking several months.
While the pure technical installation steps can often be executed in under 45 minutes, this does not reflect the real-world timeline. In practice:
- Several steps require high-level administrative permissions in Azure and Entra ID
- Tasks are often split across different IT roles or teams, which introduces dependencies
- Many organisations must follow formal change and approval procedures before changes can be applied
The total duration therefore depends less on technical complexity and more on organizational processes, experience with Azure and command-line tools, and the number of exam images that need to be built, tested, and approved.
The following factors commonly extend the timeline:
- Requesting/issuing the wildcard certificate
- Creating the required DNS delegation for a subdomain you allocate to the implementation
- Creating the dynamic group in Entra ID
- Creating an MFA exclusion in Conditional Access for students during the exam
- Troubleshooting security systems or policies that unintentionally interfere with the solution
- Navigating internal change approval processes and boards
What kind of roles do I need for an implementation?
Section titled “What kind of roles do I need for an implementation?”The following roles should be involved in the implementation:
- Azure Virtual Desktop specialist
- Azure Admin
- Schoolyear Admin
- Workspace administrator
The same person might fulfill some of these roles.
Why don’t you offer a SaaS solution?
Section titled “Why don’t you offer a SaaS solution?”Microsoft does not allow us to offer a SaaS version of Schoolyear AVD. Currently, Microsoft’s licensing model requires customers to deploy Azure Virtual Desktop in their own Azure Tenant.
Operation
Section titled “Operation”Does planning or running an AVD exam typically require IT involvement?
Section titled “Does planning or running an AVD exam typically require IT involvement?”No, our solution does not require IT staff to perform operational tasks before, during, or after exams. The AVD add-on automatically orchestrates all required Azure resources, so no manual work is needed.
That said, standby availability for incident response and regular maintenance is required. If unexpected behavior occurs within Azure, our system alerts your IT team, who should then respond as needed.
How much does Schoolyear AVD cost?
Section titled “How much does Schoolyear AVD cost?”Schoolyear AVD is included in the standard yearly license for Safe Exam Workspace.
Does Schoolyear charge money for individual exams?
Section titled “Does Schoolyear charge money for individual exams?”No, Schoolyear does not charge anything for individual exams.
However, you do have a cost per individual exam in Azure.
How much does an exam in Azure cost?
Section titled “How much does an exam in Azure cost?”This is, of course, entirely dependent on your agreement with Azure, and Schoolyear will never be able to give you a quotation for this.
However, we estimate, based on the public list price of Azure, you will spend between €1.50 and €2.00 per exam session for normal, Office-like, workloads.
What kind of license do I need in Azure?
Section titled “What kind of license do I need in Azure?”Based on the information that is publicly available to use, our understanding is that each student that uses Azure Virtual Desktop, must have a Microsoft 365 A3/5 or E3/5 license.
Does the persistent infrastructure incur any significant costs?
Section titled “Does the persistent infrastructure incur any significant costs?”No, the resources in the base resource group commonly do not exceed €10 a year. Storing the exam images commonly adds €10 to €50 a year. Please note: your institution might have set-up tenant-wide regular virus scans, they can introduce limited additional persistent costs.
Image lifecycle & patching
Section titled “Image lifecycle & patching”How often should exam images be rebuilt?
Section titled “How often should exam images be rebuilt?”All recommended operational maintenance is listed on the Service Controls page.
How are Windows and application updates handled for exam session hosts?
Section titled “How are Windows and application updates handled for exam session hosts?”Exam session hosts are single-use and are removed after each exam. Because of this, Schoolyear does not do runtime patching on these machines.
When an image is built:
- Windows Update is turned off
- Updates are expected to be applied by rebuilding the image, not while an exam is running
This creates a predictable exam environment, with no surprise updates or reboots during an exam. The session is less reliant on internet access and performance is not impacted.
Does Schoolyear validate the security of our images?
Section titled “Does Schoolyear validate the security of our images?”Schoolyear does not validate the security of images that you or any other third-party make in AVD. You can either validate the security yourself or use a third-party penetration testing provider.
Keep in mind that our EULA does not allow penetration tests on our VDI Browser.
Capacity
Section titled “Capacity”How many concurrent students can use Schoolyear AVD?
Section titled “How many concurrent students can use Schoolyear AVD?”Schoolyear does not limit the number of concurrent users that can use Schoolyear AVD.
This limit is set by your resource quotas in Azure. Contact your Azure distributor for information about your quotas and their underlying SLAs.
Which region should I use for Schoolyear AVD?
Section titled “Which region should I use for Schoolyear AVD?”Microsoft urges customers to use their larger core regions, not their edge locations.
E.g., for West-European customers they recommend deploying in Germany (germanywestcentral),
not westeurope, as their capacity is energy-constrained in The Netherlands.
My deployments are failing because of capacity problems, what should I do?
Section titled “My deployments are failing because of capacity problems, what should I do?”You have two options:
- Move your workload to a region with more capacity. E.g., for Europe, you can consider Germany or Sweden.
- Increase your deployment time, so you can retry acquiring capacity manually in your region of choice when a deployment fails.
Image packaging & platform support
Section titled “Image packaging & platform support”Is MSIX or MSIX app attach supported in Schoolyear AVD?
Section titled “Is MSIX or MSIX app attach supported in Schoolyear AVD?”No, Schoolyear does not currently provide guidance or active support for using MSIX or MSIX app attach with Schoolyear AVD. Our image building tool(/image-building/intro/) is optimized for exams and our solution. It is designed for speedy deployments and stable, secure, non-persistent exam environments.
External app deployment tools are typically designed for different use cases and are difficult to integrate with the network lockdown measures.
Is Intune supported for exam session hosts?
Section titled “Is Intune supported for exam session hosts?”Using Intune for exam session hosts is not actively supported by Schoolyear.
Exam session hosts are short-lived, heavily locked down, and have limited or no internet access. Adding Intune introduces more moving parts, dependencies on cloud connectivity and possible delays from policies or app deployments. Because of this, we recommend managing exam environments through image rebuilds and layers, rather than through Intune or similar device management tools.
Can Group Policy Objects be used to control/restrict access to certain applications, within one image?
Section titled “Can Group Policy Objects be used to control/restrict access to certain applications, within one image?”While it might theoretically be possible, we do not actively support this. Since our solution significantly simplifies the image building and maintenance process, there should be no need for using GPO’s. It is relatively easy to maintain a complete collection of images for all exam formats. To elaborate, a layer is created (or retrieved from the community) for each application the students’ might need during their exams. Then, you can easily bundle the layers to create any combination you might need for an exam. As a result, you should have a complete set of exam images. More information on building images can be found here.
Architecture
Section titled “Architecture”Is it possible to use multi-session VMs?
Section titled “Is it possible to use multi-session VMs?”No. Schoolyear is not designed to support multi-session VMs for Schoolyear AVD exam environments.
Schoolyear AVD is designed around single-session, non-persistent virtual machines. This enables:
- Strong isolation between students
- Predictable, similar performance for students
- A clean, fresh environment for every exam session
- Simpler incident management and post-mortems
Using multi-session VMs introduces shared state and resource contention between users, which does not align with the security, reliability and fairness requirements of exam scenarios.