Microsoft Dev Box Adds New Features Ahead of its General Availability in July

Cloud Computing

Microsoft Dev Box, the company’s new Azure service that provides access to a developer workstation in the cloud is getting new features ahead of its general availability. Following the launch of a public preview back in August, Microsoft announced at its Build developer conference today that Microsoft Dev Box will become generally available in July 2023. 

So far, Microsoft says that it has been testing its Dev Box solution with more than 9,500 engineers internally who’ve been using the cloud-based workstations as their primary work machine. Moreover, over 50 organizations across financial services, retail, automotive, and other industries have provided feedback to Microsoft about its new Dev Box solution. 

“At Microsoft, we’re actively transitioning to Dev Box, and already, the onboarding process that used to take days now takes me about 20 minutes,” emphasized Anthony Cangialosi, Group Product Manager, Developer Division. For organizations, Microsoft Dev Box provides pre-built images will all the tools developers need to start working immediately. As for management, the cloud-based workstations also support Intune enrollment and project-based virtual networks. 

New Microsoft Dev Box capabilities to boost productivity

When Microsoft Dev Box goes out of preview in July, developers will get access to two new high-end Dev Box configurations: One will offer 16 vCPUs and 64 GB RAM and the other one will have 32 vCPUs and 128 GB RAM. Moreover, Microsoft is also adding a new 2TB SSD storage option.

Organizations can now configure higher-powered Microsoft Dev Box SKUs
Organizations can now configure higher-powered Microsoft Dev Box SKUs (Image credit: Microsoft)

To help get developers save time, Microsoft is also providing the option to hibernate 8 and 16-core dev boxes instead of shutting them down to minimize costs. When resuming a dev box, developers will find their apps and work in the same state as they were before hibernation kicked in. 

This week, Microsoft is also making new starter developer images available in the Azure Marketplace. “These images contain Windows optimizations, apps, and settings to improve the overall developer experience. These images can be used as-is or they can be the base image for further customization by dev teams,” Cangialosi said today

Lastly, organizations are getting more options to customize their dev boxes with new YAML files stored in a git repository. These configuration-as-code definitions for Microsoft Dev Box are currently available in private preview and you can sign up on this page.