The necessity for innovation in native developer environments
When you’ve been following our Microsoft Dev Field journey, you doubtless know the way dev-optimized digital desktop infrastructure (VDI) can rework in the present day’s developer workstation. Conventional, bodily workstations are often hampered by complicated atmosphere setup, misplaced productiveness from conflicting configurations, and an absence of scalability. Our objective in constructing Microsoft Dev Field was to beat these challenges by offering builders with self-service entry to preconfigured, project-based workstations—all whereas sustaining centralized administration and IT guardrails.
Microsoft Dev Field
Cloud workstations constructed to assist key developer use instances
A 12 months out from Microsoft Dev Field common availability, the worth of a service like Microsoft Dev Field is turning into much more clear. At Microsoft, we’ve skilled firsthand the advantages of Microsoft Dev Field for the developer expertise, and we’re not alone. Ahead-thinking clients like GM are additionally remodeling their developer toolchain with Microsoft Dev Field. However we wished a rigorous, quantifiable view of how this cloud-based answer stacks up with different improvement environments.
On this weblog put up, we’ll check out the benchmark report Assessing Microsoft Dev Field Cloud-Based mostly Developer Workstations, carried out by knowledgeable, unbiased analysis agency GigaOm, to evaluation their findings. Learn on to find out how Microsoft Dev Field compares to different dev workstations.
Takeaways from GigaOm’s examine
At the beginning of the 12 months, GigaOm carried out an in depth investigation of Microsoft Dev Field capabilities, together with a deep dive into efficiency configurations and subject checks by which they deployed a brand new Microsoft Dev Field, constructed customized pictures, and used Microsoft Visible Studio caching, and the outcomes communicate for themselves.
“There was little development within the administration, automation, or defining of extremely custom-made VDI options…till now. [Microsoft Dev Box] delivers vital profit over outfitting improvement groups with conventional laptops or VDI-served stations.”
GigaOm
GigaOm’s hands-on-testing additional broke this takeaway down into three main findings:
- Microsoft Dev Field considerably improved developer productiveness and lowered configuration time and IT overhead in comparison with VDI options.
- Developer typing expertise felt pretty much as good as on a neighborhood machine—even over hotspot and public Wi-Fi.
- A Visible Studio-equipped Microsoft Dev Field setup produced higher efficiency with the pattern Chromium code base than VDI or native purchasers.
GigaOm’s testing matched what we’ve already seen via our personal dogfooding at Microsoft—that there’s a “sturdy worth proposition for using Microsoft Dev Field to extend productiveness.”
How Microsoft Dev Field will increase developer productiveness and boosts safety
Microsoft Dev Field offers worth to organizations in three key methods:
- Remodeling the developer workstation expertise.
- Accelerating developer workflows via project-based configurations.
- Sustaining centralized safety and governance.
GigaOm’s Efficiency Benchmark validated every of those claims. Let’s take a more in-depth take a look at the capabilities in Microsoft Dev Field that ship these advantages and what GigaOm discovered within the outcomes of their testing.
1. Remodeling the dev workstation expertise
Microsoft Dev Field essentially transforms the dev workstation expertise by supplying you with self-service, on-demand entry to your personal workstations. As a substitute of ready for IT assist, you may spin up a dev field occasion the place and whenever you want it on any machine—which is vital when developer agility is extra essential than ever.
GigaOm’s take a look at outcomes with ready-to-code dev containers:
“[With Microsoft Dev Box], developer typing expertise felt pretty much as good as on a neighborhood machine, even over hotspot and public Wi-Fi, and is usable even on sluggish web connections. Microsoft Dev Field moreover presents an inherent profit to distant employees with sluggish or unreliable web, as giant supply information or improvement environments don’t should be downloaded to your native machine—growing, constructing, and testing functions performs like you might be within the datacenter.”
GigaOm
GigaOm’s Efficiency Benchmark strengthened the worth of self-service, ready-to-code machines. When evaluating Microsoft Dev Field to a bodily machine, the report discovered that “a totally automated Microsoft Dev Field deployment utilizing Azure VM Picture Builder and customizations for Microsoft Dev Field sharply reduces time on job.”
GigaOm experiences that Microsoft Dev Field:
“can slash the setup time for a brand new person from six or extra hours of configuration work, and doubtlessly days of transport lag, to being ready-to-code in below an hour with all of the instruments, stipulations, community entry, and the most recent supply code obtainable by default.”
That may imply lots of or hundreds of hours throughout builders in your group specializing in what issues most: their code.
2. Accelerating dev workflows with project-based configurations
With Microsoft Dev Field, you’re not restricted to a single configuration outlined by IT. As a substitute, Microsoft Dev Field provides you and your group the flexibility to take core parts from IT—like community configurations, base pictures, and compute and storage configurations—and customise them additional with configuration-as-code information to create pre-configurations with every thing you want in your challenge.
GigaOm expertise utilizing preconfigured, project-based dev containers:
“[Deploying multiple Dev Boxes] considerably reduces the necessity for builders to repeatedly reconfigure their workstations to accommodate completely different project-specific configurations or to wrestle with the administration of native digital machines. With individualized Dev Bins, builders can seamlessly change between these remoted environments, enabling them to work on varied tasks with numerous technical necessities with out encountering useful resource conflicts or efficiency degradation.”
GigaOm
The advantages of standardized, project-based configurations turns into clear when mixed with developer self-service entry, as proven by the GigaOm report. The report emphasizes that Microsoft Dev Field could be configured with as much as 32 digital CPU (vCPU), 128 GB of RAM, and a couple of TB of storage, “far exceeding the capabilities of almost each laptop computer in the marketplace.”
But much more considerably, Microsoft Dev Field offers you with the pliability to pair completely different storage and compute choices with completely different challenge configurations. GigaOm experiences that “you may carry over the identical ready-to-code configuration from smaller Dev Bins to a brand new machine. This may be beneficial if that you must iterate shortly on a mission-critical replace or hotfix.”
This flexibility of configurations helps account for 64% sooner software program construct instances utilizing Microsoft Dev Field than a median-spec bodily machine, as proven within the following graph:
3. Sustaining centralized safety and administration
Importantly, Microsoft Dev Field delivers these advantages with out impacting admin workflows or lowering centralized administration and governance. IT admins present the core parts that go into making Microsoft Dev Field configurations, which means they finally management permissions, entry controls, and community connections. And since Microsoft Dev Field is managed via Microsoft Intune, IT admins preserve centralized visibility of Microsoft Dev Field cases as soon as deployed—no matter the place they’re working.
GigaOm on Microsoft Dev Field safety and administration:
“[With Dev Box], directors have complete management over the safety and administration of the cloud-based developer workstations their builders deploy via Microsoft Intune.”
GigaOm
GigaOm highlights the significance of this management, emphasizing:
“As a substitute of granting entry to delicate firm knowledge on exterior gadgets past the organizations’ direct management, [Microsoft Dev Box] digital desktops allow a safer strategy. Contractors and distributors entry a digital desktop throughout the group’s community, which means delicate knowledge stays throughout the firm’s safe atmosphere. This centralized strategy permits for stricter management, monitoring, and administration of entry, lowering the chance of information breaches or unauthorized use.”
Remodeling the dev expertise of in the present day—and tomorrow
The GigaOm report concludes that with Microsoft Dev Field, organizations can “obtain large enhancements in developer productiveness, innovation velocity, and discount of logistics and bodily machine administration.”
Having already deployed Microsoft Dev Field throughout lots of of groups and hundreds of builders inside Microsoft over the previous 12 months, I can say these outcomes aren’t altogether shocking—however they’re positively encouraging. These numbers assist what we’re already seeing at Microsoft, however it’s essential to recollect that is simply the beginning. We’re persevering with to innovate with Microsoft Dev Field, and as we do, the impression it has on enhancing the developer expertise will solely improve. We’ve received an thrilling horizon for Microsoft Dev Field, and we are able to’t wait to share extra with you.
Get began with Microsoft Dev Field
When you’re curious to study extra:
To see what Microsoft Dev Field can do in your group:
When you’ve already began utilizing Microsoft Dev Field, we’d love to listen to what you assume. Please submit any suggestions you’ve gotten so we are able to proceed making Microsoft Dev Field the best choice for developer productiveness.
1 Efficiency declare based mostly on knowledge from a examine commissioned by Microsoft and printed by GigaOm in January 2024. Efficiency outcomes are based mostly upon the configurations detailed within the GigaOm Efficiency Benchmark. Precise outcomes and costs might fluctuate based mostly on configuration and area.
2 To make use of Microsoft Dev Field, every person should be licensed for Home windows 11 Enterprise or Home windows 10 Enterprise, Microsoft Endpoint Supervisor, and Microsoft Entra ID P1 (previously Azure Lively Listing P1). Along with being obtainable independently, these licenses are included in Microsoft 365 F3, Microsoft 365 E3, Microsoft 365 E5, Microsoft 365 A3, Microsoft 365 A5, Microsoft 365 Enterprise Premium, and Microsoft 365 Training Scholar Use Profit subscriptions.