Azure DevTest Labs Now at GA -- Visual Studio Magazine

Azure DevTest Labs Now at GA

Developer targeting cloud deployments can now use Azure DevTest Labs for development and testing and control costs at the same time.

By Michael Domingo
05/31/2016

Developer whose apps are targeted to deployment in cloud environments can now use Azure DevTest Labs for development and testing and cost control, now that it's been made generally available as of last week.

A blog post from Microsoft's Xiaoying Guo describes a list of issues with app deployments that Azure DevTest Labs aims to solve, including the ability to deliver a test environment quickly using traditional physical methods, environmental configurations, and cloud resource management and costs for those opting to take the cloud route with app testing an deployments.

"That's why we build Azure DevTest Labs, where you can get your fast, easy and lean Dev/Test environments specifically for your team and on demand," she writes.

Azure DevTest Labs provides developers with three options for VM bases for creating on-demand testing and deployment environments: Marketplace images, custom images, and Formulas. Formulas are reusable bases that have predefined settings.

To get up to speed quickly, developers can use artifacts that centralize the gathering of extensions and tools and executed actions from a JSON file, a number of which are already available in the public GitHub repository. "Artifacts in the DevTest Labs allow users to run VM extensions and install tools, deploy applications or execute some custom actions once a lab VM is created," Gao said. "You can add a VM with artifacts to a lab or applied artifacts to any existing lab VMs."

Azure DevTest Labs is fully supported and integrated with Azure Resource Manager, and is also available as a Task in the Visual Studio Marketplace "to better support your release pipeline in Visual Studio Team Services," she notes.

About the Author

Michael Domingo is a long-time software publishing veteran, having started up and managed several developer publications for the Clipper compiler, Microsoft Access, and Visual Basic. He's also managed IT pubs for 1105 Media, including Microsoft Certified Professional Magazine and Virtualization Review before landing his current gig as Visual Studio Magazine Editor in Chief. Besides his publishing life, he's a professional photographer, whose work can be found by Googling domingophoto.

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