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How to create and manage an Azure AI Studio hub

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Important

Some of the features described in this article might only be available in preview. This preview is provided without a service-level agreement, and we don't recommend it for production workloads. Certain features might not be supported or might have constrained capabilities. For more information, see Supplemental Terms of Use for Microsoft Azure Previews.

As an administrator, you can create and manage Azure AI Studio hubs. Hubs provide a hosting environment for the AI Studio projects of a team, and help you as an IT admin centrally set up security settings and govern usage and spend. You can create and manage a hub from the Azure portal or from the AI Studio.

In this article, you learn how to create and manage a hub in AI Studio (for getting started).

Create a hub in AI Studio

To create a new hub, you need either the Owner or Contributor role on the resource group or on an existing hub. If you're unable to create a hub due to permissions, reach out to your administrator. If your organization is using Azure Policy, don't create the resource in AI Studio. Create the hub in the Azure portal instead.

To create a hub in Azure AI Studio, follow these steps:

  1. Go to the Home page in Azure AI studio and sign in with your Azure account.

  2. Select All hubs from the left pane and then select + New hub.

    Screenshot of the button to create a new hub.

  3. In the Create a new hub dialog, enter a name for your hub (such as contoso-hub) and select Next. Leave the default Connect Azure AI Services option selected. A new AI services connection is created for the hub.

    Screenshot of the dialog to connect services while creating a new hub.

  4. Review the information and select Create.

    Screenshot of the dialog to review the settings for the new hub.

  5. You can view the progress of the hub creation in the wizard.

    Screenshot of the dialog to review the progress of hub resources creation.

Create a secure hub in the Azure portal

If your organization is using Azure Policy, set up a hub that meets your organization's requirements instead of using AI Studio for resource creation.

  1. From the Azure portal, search for Azure AI Studio and create a new hub by selecting + New Azure AI hub

  2. Enter your hub name, subscription, resource group, and location details.

  3. For Azure AI services base models, select an existing AI services resource or create a new one. Azure AI services include multiple API endpoints for Speech, Content Safety, and Azure OpenAI.

    Screenshot of the option to set hub basic information.

  4. Select the Storage tab to specify storage account settings.

    Screenshot of the Create a hub with the option to set storage resource information.

  5. Select the Networking tab to set up Network isolation. Read more on network isolation. For a walkthrough of creating a secure hub, see Create a secure hub.

    Screenshot of the Create a hub with the option to set network isolation information.

  6. Select the Encryption tab to set up data encryption. You can either use Microsoft-managed keys or enable Customer-managed keys.

    Screenshot of the Create a hub with the option to select your encryption type.

  7. Select the Identity tab. By default, System assigned identity is enabled, but you can switch to User assigned identity if existing storage, key vault, and container registry are selected in Storage.

    Screenshot of the Create a hub with the option to select a managed identity.

    Note

    If you select User assigned identity, your identity needs to have the Cognitive Services Contributor role in order to successfully create a new hub.

  8. Select the Tags tab to add tags.

    Screenshot of the Create a hub with the option to add tags.

  9. Select Review + create > Create.

Manage your hub from the Azure portal

Manage access control

Manage role assignments from Access control (IAM) within the Azure portal. Learn more about hub role-based access control.

To add grant users permissions:

  1. Select + Add to add users to your hub.

  2. Select the Role you want to assign.

    Screenshot of the page to add a role within the Azure portal hub view.

  3. Select the Members you want to give the role to.

    Screenshot of the add members page within the Azure portal hub view.

  4. Review + assign. It can take up to an hour for permissions to be applied to users.

Networking

Hub networking settings can be set during resource creation or changed in the Networking tab in the Azure portal view. Creating a new hub invokes a Managed Virtual Network. This streamlines and automates your network isolation configuration with a built-in Managed Virtual Network. The Managed Virtual Network settings are applied to all projects created within a hub.

At hub creation, select between the networking isolation modes: Public, Private with Internet Outbound, and Private with Approved Outbound. To secure your resource, select either Private with Internet Outbound or Private with Approved Outbound for your networking needs. For the private isolation modes, a private endpoint should be created for inbound access. For more information on network isolation, see Managed virtual network isolation. To create a secure hub, see Create a secure hub.

At hub creation in the Azure portal, creation of associated Azure AI services, Storage account, Key vault, Application insights, and Container registry is given. These resources are found on the Resources tab during creation.

To connect to Azure AI services (Azure OpenAI, Azure AI Search, and Azure AI Content Safety) or storage accounts in Azure AI Studio, create a private endpoint in your virtual network. Ensure the public network access (PNA) flag is disabled when creating the private endpoint connection. For more about Azure AI services connections, follow documentation here. You can optionally bring your own (BYO) search, but this requires a private endpoint connection from your virtual network.

Encryption

Projects that use the same hub, share their encryption configuration. Encryption mode can be set only at the time of hub creation between Microsoft-managed keys and Customer-managed keys.

From the Azure portal view, navigate to the encryption tab, to find the encryption settings for your hub. For hubs that use CMK encryption mode, you can update the encryption key to a new key version. This update operation is constrained to keys and key versions within the same Key Vault instance as the original key.

Screenshot of the Encryption page of the hub in the Azure portal.

Update Azure Application Insights and Azure Container Registry

To use custom environments for Prompt Flow, you're required to configure an Azure Container Registry for your hub. To use Azure Application Insights for Prompt Flow deployments, a configured Azure Application Insights resource is required for your hub.

You can configure your hub for these resources during creation or update after creation. To update Azure Application Insights from the Azure portal, navigate to the Properties for your hub in the Azure portal, then select Change Application Insights. You can also use the Azure SDK/CLI options or infrastructure-as-code templates to update both Azure Application Insights and Azure Container Registry for the hub.

Screenshot of the properties page of the hub resource in the Azure portal.

Next steps