Visual Studio in the cloud? [closed]

Question

Is there a cloud solution where

• Visual Studio runs on a virtual desktop hosted in the PUBLIC cloud (not on private physical server in my computer room)
• the virtual desktop can be reached from anywhere in the world
• the virtual desktop can talk to an actual remote SQL Server instance on another domain over a VPN
• the VPN would require no special software to be installed on the firewall of the remote domain
• the virtual desktop would be able to join other Windows domains (somewhere else in the world) as a domain-user so that Visual Studio can publish apps to LAN servers inside those domains?

Crispate

It sounds like you're asking "Can I run Windows as a virtual desktop, hosted on the Internet" -- in which case you have grossly over complicated your question with details that don't need to be brought up to ask this question. Yes, there are ways to do this but I'm not certain of the specifics (hence a comment rather than answer), but you can look into things like aws.amazon.com/solutions/global-solution-providers/citrix – Bronnie

@mah: Isn't it hubris of you to accuse me of "grossly overcomplicating the question" when you say you are "not certain of the specifics"? But in any case, thank you for the link. I will explore it. Thanks for the term "desktop virtualization" used there. – Crispate

I'm not certain of the specifics of how the solutions for purchasing desktop virtualization work, but that doesn't change the very real fact that your question was way too verbose, hence overly complicated, and this is not hubris on my part. I can see now that your lack of familiarity with virtualization is likely to cause of your being too verbose, but I apologize if you took offense in how I stated it. Offense was not my intent. At any rate, I'm glad you seem to have been helped by Paul's answer and possibly my link as well. – Bronnie

@mah: You are confusing specificity with verbosity. When looking into cloud servers a year or so ago (now I'm looking for cloud desktop) I did run into a problem where the cloud server did not have a dedicated hardware firewall but used the built-in Windows software firewall; it was unable to establish a VPN with our hardware firewall unless certain VPN-client-software was installed on it, but the VPN-client-software would not run on Windows Server, only on Windows clients. – Crispate

Answer 1

Windows Azure Virtual Machines come to mind here. Now, granted, you will have to install and have licenses for all the software you wish to use (Though I think a MSDN license would cover you). But, you could easily deploy a VM, configure with all of your development tools then save that as a template. The template could then be redeployed in minutes to any number of VMs.

Azure virtual machines can do VPN and join domains.

Swoon

thank you for the term "Virtual Machines" -- vastly improved the signal-to-noise ratio when searching :-) – Crispate

Answer 2

Building on the answer Paul gives above, there is a Virtual Machine image in Windows Azure (for MSDN subscribers). IT's a pretty new approach for us however I believe fulfills your requirements including WW public access and a VPN solution.

You can read about the details here: http://visualstudio2013galleryimage.azurewebsites.net/

You can see a short video of the feature in action here: http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-Studio/Launch-2013/WC120

Let me know if you have questions or feedback about this approach.

Thanks,

Paul Yuknewicz, Lead PM, Visual Studio

Susurrate

Answer 3

Have a look at CloudShare, it probably does what you need. These two article from their KB Requesting and setting up a CloudShare VPN Gateway and blog Network Orchestration: VPN, Federation, Integration explains how you can link a CloudShare VM to your corporate network as your require.

More generally the optimal solution depends on whether you want a turnkey solution where all the software is pre-installed (and hence you pay more because the cloud provider handles the software licensing) or a "bare metal" VM that you build up yourself installing everything (hence you pay less to them and have to procure software licenses yourself), or something in between. That is not clear from your question, can you clarify?

In other words and greatly simplified:

• Software as a Service (SaaS) including VM, Windows Server, and Visual Studio pre-installed
• Platform as a Service (PaaS) has virtual machine, operating system and other solution infrastructure eg database, web server, etc, but not your primary application
• Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) has virtual machine with nothing installed, not even the OS

Diao

Answer 4

2019 Update

Microsoft offers now Visual Studio Online.

Here is list of what this is all about: What is Visual Studio Online?

Visual Studio Online is in public preview.

Corkage

2020 Update Please checkout yaoe.io - Your developer workspace in the browser – Tentative

Answer 5

2020 Update

Please checkout yaoe.io - Your developer workspace in the browser

Visual Studio Code is ported to the browser. Get the same native experience with real-time collaboration!

Tentative

Answer 6

Microsoft just launched Visual Studio Online yesterday along with Visual Studio 2013. It runs on most modern browsers. Google for more details.

Mathian

As far as I can see, VSOnline is really only 'Team Foundation Server Online'. Can you truly develop applications 'in the cloud', ie not have any local code, with VSOnline? – Separable

Yeah, VSO is only for team collaboration and sharing and versioning of sources. The idea of Visual Studio Online SaaS (Software as a Service) and not having to install or maintain VS on your desktop would be brilliant. I can only imagine the challenges of that implementation given all the add-ins and packages you can configure into your solution. They would have to deal with all those VS version and .NET compatibility issues. Then you get into challenges of deployment into local web servers from a cloud product hosted outside your firewalls. Imagine .NET development from a ChromeBook, – Unconquerable