Final month at Microsoft Construct, we shared a number of new options in Microsoft Dev Field—ready-to-code, cloud-based workstations optimized for developer use circumstances and productiveness. From new integrations with Visible Studio, a preview of configuration-as-code customization, and our personal rollout of Dev Field internally, there was so much to share, and the response to this information was nice. Immediately, I’m excited to share one other announcement—Microsoft Dev Field is now typically accessible.
Our journey to dev-optimized digital desktops
We first introduced Microsoft Dev Field at Microsoft Construct 2022, however our journey didn’t begin there. For greater than seven years, we’ve centered on enhancing developer productiveness and satisfaction with the facility of the cloud. In 2016, we launched Azure DevTest Labs, a service that permits growth groups to create templatized digital machines (VMs) for quite a lot of growth and testing use circumstances.
Over time, we’ve helped many purchasers construct customized options on DevTest Labs to increase on its core options. One use case that has been particularly well-liked is utilizing DevTest labs to create persistent, preconfigured dev environments. However constructing these customized options on high of DevTest Labs is difficult, requiring important effort to construct out further governance and administration options. Prospects needed a turnkey answer.
Delivering quick, self-service dev environments within the cloud
In response, we launched Visible Studio Codespaces in 2019—preconfigured, container- and Linux-based dev environments that builders might spin up in seconds straight from Visible Studio Code, offering builders with a quick and straightforward strategy to work on their apps whereas on the go.
Builders love Codespaces for its velocity and mobility, and the service nonetheless exists immediately as GitHub Codespaces. However software program growth requires all kinds of instruments. Initially, we constructed Codespaces to help Visible Studio Code and GitHub, however clients shortly began asking for help for different Built-in Growth Environments (IDEs), supply code administration, and instruments.
As a primary step, we began to increase Codespaces to incorporate help for Visible Studio. Nonetheless, doing so revealed extra challenges than we anticipated—primarily round enterprise-ready administration and governance. That, mixed with the truth that devs needed entry to all their instruments of their cloud surroundings, made us notice we would have liked to ship:
- Enterprise-ready safety, compliance, and price administration capabilities.
- Excessive-fidelity, cloud-based efficiency with built-in dev device integrations.
- Self-service entry to preconfigured, project-specific assets.
Basically, the answer wanted to be a developer-optimized virtualization answer. Microsoft already provides Home windows 365—delivering Cloud PCs, securely streaming your personalised Home windows desktop, apps, settings, and content material from the Microsoft Cloud to any gadget wherever. Critically, Home windows 365 is totally built-in with Microsoft Intune, which permits IT admins to handle their Cloud PCs alongside their bodily gadgets. That was precisely what we had been searching for, so we determined to make use of Home windows 365 as the inspiration for our new answer.
Reworking the dev workstation expertise
With enterprise administration taken care of, our subsequent consideration was the underlying {hardware}. Whereas high-powered compute was an apparent want, we quickly realized that storage can even considerably affect developer efficiency. Giant builds put numerous pressure on storage drives, which turn out to be a bottleneck if learn or write speeds can’t sustain with the construct. To account for this, we determined to incorporate premium Stable-State Drivers (SSDs) in our product. However we nonetheless hadn’t addressed the first challenges of dev workstations—lengthy deployment occasions and configuration errors attributable to advanced tasks and toolsets.
Fixing these issues would require a extra basic shift in how our service managed configurations and deployment. Devs work on all kinds of tasks, lots of which require particular instruments. For these devs, a blanket, role-based configuration would require them to spend time tailoring their workstation and putting in further instruments as soon as it was provisioned. IT admins and dev leads alike wanted a strategy to create a number of, tailor-made configurations and allow builders to spin up a brand new workstation on-demand that may be ready-to-code for his or her present challenge.
Our first step was to combine our answer with the Azure Compute Gallery, offering a scalable strategy to share base pictures and handle picture variations. We then arrange a brand new administration layer that enabled groups to arrange their pictures and networking configurations by challenge. Now, dev leads and IT admins might arrange a number of workstation configurations for a single challenge. Admins might even outline the Azure area during which every workstation would deploy, guaranteeing a high-fidelity expertise for devs around the globe.
By preconfiguring workstations like this, we eradicated the necessity for devs to succeed in out to IT each time they wanted a brand new workstation. And since we might make a number of workstation configurations accessible for a single challenge, devs weren’t locked right into a single configuration—they may choose a tailor-made workstation, spin it up, and begin coding shortly. We even gave devs a specialised Developer Portal that provides quick, quick access to their project-based workstations. Devs can even use this portal to shortly deploy environments for any stage of growth utilizing Azure Deployment Environments, additionally typically accessible.
Arriving at Microsoft Dev Field
That’s how we ended up at Microsoft Dev Field—cloud-based workstations optimized for developer use circumstances and productiveness. Dev Field combines developer-optimized capabilities with the enterprise-ready administration of Home windows 365 and Microsoft Intune. And as we work to enhance Dev Field, we’ve continued to companion with different groups at Microsoft. Most just lately, we labored carefully with the Visible Studio crew so as to add built-in integrations that optimize the Visible Studio expertise on Dev Field. We’re additionally actively introducing configuration-as-code customization into Dev Field, which is able to present dev leads much more granular management to configure dev containers round particular duties and allow them to attach Dev Field provisioning to their present Git movement.
However earlier than we launched Dev Field, we needed to verify it was actually enterprise-ready. At Microsoft, it’s frequent to check our providers internally earlier than releasing them. On this case, that meant stress-testing Dev Field towards merchandise with repos which might be tons of of gigabytes massive. This has been a difficult however helpful expertise, and our learnings have helped us velocity up the trail to basic availability. Already, there are greater than 10,000 engineers utilizing Dev Field at Microsoft, and we now have a number of clients utilizing Dev Field in manufacturing environments immediately.
Enabling the very best of Dev Field with versatile pricing
From our preliminary work with clients, we realized so much about their utilization patterns and the use circumstances it will possibly help. Dev Field works nice as a full-time desktop alternative, or for specialised part-time use. You possibly can spin up a high-powered Dev Field for a very compute-heavy activity, or a second machine to isolate an experiment or proof of idea.
Initially, we deliberate on charging for Dev Field based mostly on a pure consumption mannequin—clients would solely pay for Dev Field when it was operating, and no extra. Sadly, whereas this labored nice for part-time Dev Field use, such a mannequin left numerous variability for directors that needed to pay a standardized month-to-month value for full-time utilization.
To accommodate totally different use circumstances, we’ve launched a predictable month-to-month worth for full-time Dev Field utilization whereas holding consumption-based, pay-as-you-go pricing that expenses as much as a month-to-month worth cap. This mannequin strikes a steadiness between the extremes of full consumption or subscription-only pricing, guaranteeing devs can optimize their spend for each full-time and part-time use circumstances.
Getting began with Microsoft Dev Field
Dev Field has already reworked the developer workstations at Microsoft from inflexible, long-running desktops to project-specific, ready-to-code workstations within the cloud. We’re excited to see extra builders depart behind the challenges of bodily workstations to concentrate on writing the code solely they will write. To see what Dev Field can do to your crew, go to our web site or begin a proof of idea immediately.
In the event you’ve already began utilizing Dev Field, we’d love to listen to you suppose. Please submit any suggestions you have got so we are able to maintain making Dev Field the best choice for developer productiveness.