The necessity for innovation in native developer environments
If you happen to’ve been following our Microsoft Dev Field journey, you doubtless understand how dev-optimized digital desktop infrastructure (VDI) can remodel in the present day’s developer workstation. Conventional, bodily workstations are ceaselessly hampered by advanced setting setup, misplaced productiveness from conflicting configurations, and a scarcity of scalability. Our purpose 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 help key developer use circumstances
A yr out from Microsoft Dev Field common availability, the worth of a service like Microsoft Dev Field is changing 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 prospects like GM are additionally reworking their developer toolchain with Microsoft Dev Field. However we wished a rigorous, quantifiable view of how this cloud-based answer stacks up with different growth environments.
On this weblog submit, we’ll check out the benchmark report Assessing Microsoft Dev Field Cloud-Based mostly Developer Workstations, performed by professional, impartial analysis agency GigaOm, to overview their findings. Learn on to find out how Microsoft Dev Field compares to different dev workstations.
Takeaways from GigaOm’s examine
Initially of the yr, GigaOm performed an intensive investigation of Microsoft Dev Field capabilities, together with a deep dive into efficiency configurations and subject assessments through which they deployed a brand new Microsoft Dev Field, constructed customized photographs, and used Microsoft Visible Studio caching, and the outcomes converse for themselves.
“There was little development within the administration, automation, or defining of extremely personalized VDI options…till now. [Microsoft Dev Box] delivers important profit over outfitting growth groups with conventional laptops or VDI-served stations.”
GigaOm
GigaOm’s hands-on-testing additional broke this takeaway down into three major findings:
- Microsoft Dev Field considerably improved developer productiveness and diminished configuration time and IT overhead in comparison with VDI options.
- Developer typing expertise felt pretty much as good as on an area 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 shoppers.
GigaOm’s testing matched what we’ve already seen by 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 gives worth to organizations in three key methods:
- Remodeling the developer workstation expertise.
- Accelerating developer workflows by project-based configurations.
- Sustaining centralized safety and governance.
GigaOm’s Efficiency Benchmark validated every of those claims. Let’s take a better 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 providing you with self-service, on-demand entry to your personal workstations. As an alternative of ready for IT help, you’ll be able to spin up a dev field occasion the place and if you want it on any system—which is vital when developer agility is extra essential than ever.
GigaOm’s check outcomes with ready-to-code dev bins:
“[With Microsoft Dev Box], developer typing expertise felt pretty much as good as on an area machine, even over hotspot and public Wi-Fi, and is usable even on gradual web connections. Microsoft Dev Field moreover presents an inherent profit to distant staff with gradual or unreliable web, as giant supply information or growth environments don’t have to be downloaded to your native system—growing, constructing, and testing purposes 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 system, 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 consumer from six or extra hours of configuration work, and probably days of transport lag, to being ready-to-code in below an hour with all of the instruments, conditions, community entry, and the most recent supply code out there by default.”
That may imply a whole lot or 1000’s 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 an alternative, Microsoft Dev Field offers you and your crew the power to take core elements from IT—like community configurations, base photographs, and compute and storage configurations—and customise them additional with configuration-as-code information to create pre-configurations with every part you want in your venture.
GigaOm expertise utilizing preconfigured, project-based dev bins:
“[Deploying multiple Dev Boxes] considerably reduces the necessity for builders to repeatedly reconfigure their workstations to accommodate totally different project-specific configurations or to wrestle with the administration of native digital machines. With individualized Dev Packing containers, builders can seamlessly swap between these remoted environments, enabling them to work on numerous initiatives 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 may be configured with as much as 32 digital CPU (vCPU), 128 GB of RAM, and a pair of TB of storage, “far exceeding the capabilities of almost each laptop computer in the marketplace.”
But much more considerably, Microsoft Dev Field gives you with the pliability to pair totally different storage and compute choices with totally different venture configurations. GigaOm experiences that “you’ll be able to carry over the identical ready-to-code configuration from smaller Dev Packing containers to a brand new machine. This may be useful if you might want to iterate shortly on a mission-critical replace or hotfix.”
This flexibility of configurations helps account for 64% sooner software program construct occasions utilizing Microsoft Dev Field than a median-spec bodily system, 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 decreasing centralized administration and governance. IT admins present the core elements that go into making Microsoft Dev Field configurations, that means they in the end management permissions, entry controls, and community connections. And since Microsoft Dev Field is managed by Microsoft Intune, IT admins keep 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 whole management over the safety and administration of the cloud-based developer workstations their builders deploy by Microsoft Intune.”
GigaOm
GigaOm highlights the significance of this management, emphasizing:
“As an alternative of granting entry to delicate firm information 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, that means delicate information stays throughout the firm’s safe setting. This centralized strategy permits for stricter management, monitoring, and administration of entry, decreasing the chance of knowledge 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 huge enhancements in developer productiveness, innovation velocity, and discount of logistics and bodily system administration.”
Having already deployed Microsoft Dev Field throughout a whole lot of groups and 1000’s of builders inside Microsoft over the previous yr, I can say these outcomes aren’t altogether shocking—however they’re positively encouraging. These numbers help what we’re already seeing at Microsoft, nevertheless 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 affect it has on bettering the developer expertise will solely enhance. We’ve bought 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
If you happen to’re curious to study extra:
To see what Microsoft Dev Field can do in your crew:
If you happen to’ve already began utilizing Microsoft Dev Field, we’d love to listen to what you suppose. Please submit any suggestions you may have so we are able to proceed making Microsoft Dev Field the most suitable choice for developer productiveness.
1 Efficiency declare primarily based on information from a examine commissioned by Microsoft and revealed by GigaOm in January 2024. Efficiency outcomes are primarily based upon the configurations detailed within the GigaOm Efficiency Benchmark. Precise outcomes and costs might differ primarily based on configuration and area.
2 To make use of Microsoft Dev Field, every consumer have to 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 out there 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.
