A virtual machine (VM) is indispensable to developers. I have a few myself that I use for my personal use and to try out new software. The technology behind it is quite incredible as it virtualizes a specific environment for you to accurately test your applications against. At my previous employer, we would create VMs of certain client environments in order to test application deployment and basically to see whether the application works correctly.
With Azure, developers have so many choices when deciding on a specific VM platform. You can spin up virtually (pun intended) any type of VM you need. If you want to test out the new Visual Studio, you can. A new version of Windows? You can bet there will be a VM on Azure for that. Want to play around with Linux and WordPress a bit? No problem. Azure does it all and it is incredibly easy to set up.
Consider the alternative. If VMs weren't there and you wanted to test an application on an OS such as Windows 10, you would probably have to set aside a specific machine just for testing different OS versions. That's one machine not available to you anymore for other work. Then you need to spend an hour or two setting up that PC with the correct OS. You then need to set the PC up to be available over the local network at your office. What about if you wanted to access that test machine from a remote location (at home for example)? You would need to configure it to be accessible remotely while still maintaining security. So then you set up a VPN to access the machine remotely on the off chance that the developers need to work after hours. This has to be done for a single instance of an application in development. If you have servers to spare, sure, this might not be a problem. If, however, you are a small-to-medium-sized company with limited resources, chances are you'll be reinstalling that machine soon with a different client's setup for testing.
This is where Azure is brilliant at making a difference. The setup process takes a few minutes, a moment compared to the setup required for a PC at your office. Remote access, security, event monitoring, alerts, and a whole bunch of other features are immediately available to all the developers in your team.
To start working with Azure, you will need to have an Azure account. You can create a free trial account. For more information on Azure pricing, have a look at the following URL: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/.
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file is then downloaded. You can click on the file directly to start the Remote Desktop Connection session:Virtual machines are accessible via remote connections. You can use the good old Remote Desktop Connection, or something more exotic such as mRemoteNG if you have several remote machines that you need to access. The reason that Azure is so well suited for development testing is because the resource does not have to live on your own network at all. That means the overhead involved in maintaining backups of development VMs is largely avoided.
I remember the network administrator at my previous employer regularly asking what VMs we still used. Some of these VMs were used perhaps once or twice a year, so they couldn't be deleted. Having several developers access these VMs also meant that there was a lot of junk on these VMs, which made backing those up a painful process (usually run over weekends).
Azure solves many issues and problems for IT professionals. In this chapter, we have looked at only three solutions available to you as a developer. Do not be fooled, Azure is much more powerful than just being able to provide a robust testing platform for developers. Going into detail about Azure would probably require a separate book on its own.
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