[joecot]

Is there documentation somewhere for the self-hosted environment option, which according to the product landing page and pricing page is no cost? I'm guessing the flow there is to use VSCode through the online site, but give ssh credentials to one of your servers that's running the Remote SSH VSCode environment. But once I go to Create an Environment, there's no option for a self-hosted one.

[lostintangent]

Yep! Check out this doc and let us know if you have any questions/feedback: https://aka.ms/vso-docs/vscode/self-hosted.

[joecot]

OK, I got this working for my Desktop VSCode environment and that works great. But I'm guessing this wasn't tested in combination with the SSH Remote extension?

I can register my local VSCode just fine. When I connect to a remote ssh connection, and try to register that environment, I get a prompt telling me "Failed to register local environment: Install the Azure Account extension". When I look up that extension, I can install it in the SSH environment, but I get the same error still.

[joecot]

Gotcha. I'll admit since there weren't any instructions on doing it in the online admin, and in the docs it's not listed as a subpoint, I got disheartened when I reached the docs and missed it being underneath the instructions for Cloud-hosted. I wouldn't have expected a backwards flow for the self-hosted option, but that's doable. It might be more user friendly for the article to have the headings "Create an environment (Cloud-hosted)" and "Create an environment (Self-hosted)" in the "In this article" menu on the side, or for the "Create an Environment" section to tree both on that side-menu, so it's not missed.

[aphistic]

I looked at that page and I just wanted to clarify something for myself. Does this mean you can't do a headless server since you need VS Code and some plugins? I like the idea and it would definitely be a strong argument to go back to VS Code but I was hoping I could just run some kind of server on a terminal-only VM.

[glances]

From this on the github page: https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/vsonline/issues/41

"Presently, running the "Register" command via a full instance of VS Code is the only supported flow, but the scenario you described of hosting a server without a GUI is on the product roadmap."

[aphistic]

Oh, great! Thank you!

[lullibrulli]

Thanks! So if I understand correctly I still need an azure account for self hosting, although nothing will be billed?

[lostintangent]

Correct. Though we’d love to hear feedback on this experience.

[lullibrulli]

I'm personally not a huge fan of this, since I can't see the (as in: my) benefit of this. I don't have an azure account yet (this is where the benefit for MS is I guess ;) ). I would love to just register my selfhosted environment without any hassles. Maybe this would even bring more people to register their selfhosted environment, which could bring more people to buy a hosted environment. Could potentially even benefit MS to lower the initial hurdle for new users.