Microsoft launches Dev Box Preview to make life easier for developers

Microsoft has announced the availability of the public preview of Microsoft Dev Box. The service lets developers create cloud-based workstations whenever they are needed for projects, even when working out of the office.

The company describes the secure Azure-based service as "a managed service that enables developers to create on-demand, high-performance, secure, ready-to-code, project-specific workstations in the cloud".

See also:

• Microsoft is launching a new PowerToys utility -- Screen Ruler
• Will Microsoft never learn? The company hits paid-up Office 2021 users with ads for Microsoft 365
• Google Cloud and Google Workspace now support multiple SSO IdPs

Developers have the option of working with anything from a 4 vCPU / 16GB SKU up to a 32 vCPU / 128GB SKU. Security is at the heart of the product, which is important for anyone dealing with sensitive source code. Administrators can set conditional access policies to ensure users only access dev boxes from compliant devices while keeping dev boxes up to date using expedited quality updates to deploy zero-day patches across the organization and quickly isolate compromised devices.

Writing about the new service, Microsoft says:

With Microsoft Dev Box, developers can focus on writing the code only they can write instead of trying to get a working environment that can build and run the code. Dev boxes are ready-to-code and preconfigured by the team with all the tools and settings developers need for their projects and tasks. Developers can create their own dev boxes whenever they need to quickly switch between projects, experiment on a proof-of-concept, or kick off a full build in the background while they move on to the next task.

Microsoft Dev Box supports any developer IDE, SDK, or tool that runs on Windows. Developers can target any development workload that can be built from Windows including desktop, mobile, IoT, and web applications. Microsoft Dev Box even supports building cross-platform apps thanks to Windows Subsystem for Linux and Windows Subsystem for Android. Remote access gives developers the flexibility to securely access dev boxes from any device, whether it’s Windows, MacOS, Android, iOS, or a web browser.

There is more information available on Microsoft's developer blog. As the blog post points out, during the preview period, organizations get the first 15 hours of the dev box 8vCPU and 32 GB Memory SKU for free every month, along with the first 365 hours of the dev box Storage SSD 512 GB SKU. Get started over on  the Microsoft Dev Box page.

Image credit: yu_photo / Shutterstock