Azure DevTest Labs Extension for VSTS Now at GA -- Visual Studio Magazine

Azure DevTest Labs Extension for VSTS Now at GA

A preview of the extension for spinning up Azure development and test environments right from within Visual Studio Team Services is now no longer a preview.

By Michael Domingo
06/21/2016

Microsoft's Visual Studio team has made generally available a new tool, Azure DevTest Labs Tasks, for spinning up Azure DevTest Labs quickly right from the Visual Studio Team Services environment. It's generally available now as a VSTS Extension is now available in the Visual Studio Marketplace.

It was at the beginning of May that Microsoft's Cloud group released the Azure DevTest Labs to general availability, which the company described as an environment for developers to use for quickly spinning up development and testing environments quickly within Azure. Embedded within the services was a preview of the VSTS extension, which provides for a more direct way to create those VMs from within VSTS. The AzureDevTest Labs Tasks extension has simple goals, allowing developesr to create custom images and create and delete VMs.

Use of the extension does require that developers have an Azure Resource Manager subscription to use it. One commenter, Mike Jones Techno, also notes: "Note that to use this Task you need to export/save an ARM VM template in source control and make it available as an artifact for this extension to use. That's a good thing as it forces you to version control your VM templates!

The Azure DevTest Labs Tasks extension can be downloaded from the Visual Studio Marketplace here.

The AzAzure DevTest Labs can be downloaded here.

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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