Mark Milligan

Head of Sales

<p>One reason why Microsoft’s VS Code IDE is so popular is its <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode">rich ecosystem of extensions</a> available to meet developers’ needs. A VS Code extension is an add-on or plugin that enhances the functionality of VS Code such as language servers, debugging, linting, and integration with other developer tools like git, Docker, Cloud Development Environments like Coder, and Kubernetes.</p>

<p>Coder is a Cloud Development Environment platform deployed at enterprises like banks, asset management, technology, automotive, insurance, and public sector. We have a front-row seat in these enterprises to how VS Code extensions work in concert with Coder to improve developer productivity.</p>

<p>Generative AI solutions like <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot">GitHub Copilot</a> and <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=GitHub.copilot-chat">Copilot Chat</a>, <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=AmazonWebServices.aws-toolkit-vscode">Amazon Q and CodeWhisperer</a> and <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=TabNine.tabnine-vscode">Tabnine</a> require a VS Code extension to perform their code generative AI magic. Coder notices in our customers that GenAI is a top-down, CIO-led imperative and their leadership relies on Coder to provide a quick on-ramp to enable these popular and innovative extensions.</p>

<p>For Python developers, <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=ms-python.vscode-pylance">the Pylance extension from Microsoft</a> is a feature-rich Python language server popular with developers for its coding efficiency features like IntelliSense, auto-completion, and type checking.</p>

<p>Web VS Code requires no local software besides a browser and provides quick IDE access to review or write code. Enterprises with security requirements prefer web VS Code since no additional software has to be maintained or installed on a local machine. Local VS Code, on the other hand, supports all keyboard shortcuts, has lower latency when connecting to cloud development environments, and is less prone to disconnects if there are network connectivity hiccups.</p>

<p>A Coder cloud development environment, which we call a workspace, has a built-in easy button to open a local VS Code, <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=coder.coder-remote">download Coder’s VS Code extension</a> and the Coder deployment’s matching Coder CLI, authenticate with a Coder workspace, and let developers start coding.  Local VS Code has direct access to Microsoft’s Extension Marketplace so developers can quickly add additional extensions like GenAI ones.</p>


A Coder workspace with Microsoft's web VS Code IDE called VS Code Server  in a browser.

<p>Developers who need a web VS Code have choices. In 2019, <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">Coder created the popular code-server OSS project</a> which lets VS Code run in a browser. Customers can point code-server to a private VS Code marketplace like <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-marketplace">Coder’s OSS code-marketplace</a>. Alternatively, extensions can be added as vsix files to container images, a <a href="https://jfrog.com/artifactory/">JFrog Artifactory server</a>, or a shared volume attached to a Coder workspace. code-server can also point to the <a href="https://open-vsx.org/">Open VSX Registry operated by the Eclipse Foundation</a>. code-server and any non-Microsoft web VS Code IDE however legally cannot connect to Microsoft’s VS Code Extension Marketplace.</p>

<p>Unfortunately, some VS Code extensions like GitHub Copilot and Pylance are unavailable on Open VSX and not every enterprise wants to self-host an extension marketplace or manage extensions in their container images.</p>

<p>The good news is that Microsoft also has a web solution called <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/remote/vscode-server">VS Code Server</a> similar to code-server. It can legally connect to Microsoft’s Marketplace as well as Coder’s self-hosted code-marketplace. VS Code Server, like code-server, works seamlessly in a Coder workspace.</p>

<p>You include the <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/docs/editor/command-line">VS Code code CLI binary</a> in a container image or download it as part of a Coder Terraform template along with starting VS Code Server using the code CLI subcommand serve-web which runs a server in a Coder workspace that displays the editor UI in browsers. You also add a coder app Terraform resource in the template with icon name and port to listen on, which renders as an icon in the Coder workspace. When clicked, VS Code Server opens in a browser and you start coding. VS Code extensions from the Microsoft Extension Marketplace can also be auto-installed as part of the template’s startup script for one less manual step keeping developers from being productive.</p>


A user about to create a Coder workspace where they select if want a web VS Code, and if so, Coder's code-server or Microsoft VS Code Server.

<p>Coder has Terraform modules on the Coder Registry for <a href="https://registry.coder.com/modules/code-server">code-server</a> and <a href="https://registry.coder.com/modules/vscode-web">Microsoft VS Code Server</a>. <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/pod-optional-code-server">A community member also has an example template</a> that lets the developer decide at workspace creation if they want a web VS Code, and if it should be code-server or Microsoft VS Code Server.</p>

<p>If you are with an enterprise who has an initiative to deploy a Cloud Development Environment platform to onboard developers faster, reduce build times, improve security, and better manage cloud costs, <a href="https://coder.com/contact">contact Coder</a> to have a conversation or start a <a href="https://coder.com/trial">30-day trial of Coder Enterprise</a>.</p>


Learn how to connect to Microsoft's VS Code Extension Marketplace with the VS Code Server IDE in a Coder Cloud Development Environment. Use cases include adding proprietary and innovation extensions like GitHub Copilot and Pylance.

Microsoft VS Code Server in a Coder Cloud Development Environment

<p>Coder keeps developers in flow with secure, dedicated development environments that run self-hosted open source software in an enterprise&#39;s Kubernetes or VM infrastructure. Large Global 2000 enterprises rely on Coder and JetBrains IDEs to keep developers productive. The Coder and JetBrains integration includes Coder&#39;s Gateway plugin, which automates the setup and configuration of <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/">JetBrains Gateway</a> and a remote development environment running in an enterprise&#39;s Coder deployment. Users meet demanding development needs with a  local IDE look-and-feel, familiar keyboard shortcuts, and larger compute options than otherwise available on their laptops.</p>


The Coder web dashboard with JetBrains IntelliJ and PyCharm remote development environments running in an enterprise's Kubernetes, VM or Docker infrastructure

<h2>The Integration Details</h2>

<p>JetBrains IDEs operate remotely by splitting the IDE into a headless component that runs in the Coder development environment and the Gateway client on users&#39; local machine. The result is the security and flexibility of a remote development environment while still providing a native developer experience.</p>


A Dockerfile based on a Java 11 image with the latest JetBrains IntelliJ IDEA version

<p>DevOps and Platform Engineering teams install the JetBrains IDE in the development environment&#39;s container image along with related programming languages. e.g., IntelliJ IDE and Java 11. Container images are published to an enterprise&#39;s container registry and Coder Terraform templates specify the registry, container image, and tag to instruct the Coder control plane how to build a container in a Kubernetes pod. Coder also supports development environments as containers on Docker hosts or dedicated virtual machines to meet every possible development use case.</p>


A Coder Terraform template with the new container image tag for JetBrains IntelliJ

<p>Users select a template in the Coder UI and Coder provisions the remote development environment with whatever CPU, memory, and persistent storage that their enterprise desires. </p>


A developer creating a remote development environment in Coder, using an IntelliJ Terraform template

<p>Users open JetBrains Gateway and the Coder plugin, prompting the user to authenticate into their Coder deployment using a secure API Key. </p>


The Coder plugin with the JetBrains remote development environments running

<p>After selecting one of their development environments, users download the JetBrains IDE from jetbrains.com or the Coder plugin automatically detects if the JetBrains IDE is included in the container or VM. </p>


The Coder plugin either finds the JetBrains IDE in the remote development environment, or prompts the user to download a JetBrains IDE

<p>The remote IDE starts and users begin coding through the Gateway client.</p>


JetBrains IntelliJ client running in JetBrains Gateway on a local machine - connected to a Coder remote development environment

<h2>Next Steps</h2>

<p>To get started, all you need to do is <a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/install">install Coder</a>, download <a href="https://www.jetbrains.com/remote-development/gateway/">JetBrains Gateway</a>, install the Coder plugin, select a running development environment you want to work on, and start coding. Numerous IDEs are supported, including IntelliJ IDEA, PyCharm, GoLand, RubyMine, PhpStorm, and WebStorm. If you’re a DevOps or Platform Engineering team, <a href="https://coder.com/trial">try the Coder Enterprise trial</a> for additional security, high availability, and governance capabilities.</p>


Coder partners with JetBrains to deliver an integration between Coder and JetBrains Gateway. Coder's self-hosted remote development platform empowers the Global 2000 to run Coder and JetBrains IDEs with any cloud and git provider. Coder eliminates manual development environment setup, gives developers more compute than on local machines, and intellectual property is secure.

JetBrains Gateway with the Coder plugin

Self-hosted Remote Development in JetBrains IDEs Now Available to Coder Users

<p>Like fullstack and frontend developers, professionals in data engineering, analytics and data science require a development environment and IDEs to accomplish their work.</p>

<p>Historically, users install languages like Python and IDEs like VS Code, Jupyter and JetBrains PyCharm on their local computers, check out source code like notebooks and download datasets. For compute-intensive work like model training and model running, jobs are submitted to remote, cloud compute platforms like Databricks and Snowflake to name a couple.</p>

<p>Local development environments introduce several challenges that impact end users&#39; ability to interact and deliver data solutions quickly and on time which ultimately impact their enterprise&#39;s business outcomes. Conversely, infrastructure teams like Platform Engineering, DevOps, aka DataOps and AIOps, spend an inordinate amount of time supporting end users&#39; development environments and the bottlenecks caused by an enterprise&#39;s data platform.</p>

<p>The Coder platform solves these challenges for both data professionals and the infrastructure teams that support analytics and data science development environments.</p>

<h2>End User Challenges</h2>

<h3>Time Required To Setup Experiments</h3>

<p>Local machines are by default put in the penalty box by enterprise IT. These laptops are mobile and connect through users&#39; home Internet or worse coffee shop WiFi connections, so extensive VPN and networking configurations are required to connect a user with their data required to setup analytics and data science experiments.</p>

<p>With Coder, development environments reside in the enterprise&#39;s network which is adjacent to network resources that house data and source code required for analytical experimentation.  Infrastructure teams only need to ensure connectivity from users&#39; remote development environments and their data, both which are within an enterprise&#39;s infrastructure. Remote development alternatives to Coder are SaaS and hosted which requires or in some cases prevents any connectivity with enterprises&#39; data.</p>

<p>End users also waste time installing development environments on local computers. If they switch projects with different tools, another local environment installation is required, wasting more time and keeping them out of flow and work on data experiements.</p>

<h3>Need for Powerful Servers With a Local Development Experience</h3>

<p>End users like a local development experience. IDEs open faster, keystrokes and mouse clicks instantly respond. With Coder, local VS Code and JetBrains IDEs can connect to Coder remote development environments for a snappy user experience but with all the security and compute power of a remote development environment leveraging an enterprise&#39;s scalable cloud computing infrastructure. Coder enhances this local experience with a VS Code extension and a JetBrains Gateway plugin that eliminates any configuration.</p>

<h3>Persisting Code and Data</h3>

<p>Containers as development environments are stateless. i.e., if a development environment is stopped for the day due to inactivity (which is a cost saver by the way), everything created or resident in memory is lost.</p>

<p>With Coder, development environments are defined by Terraform templates that create and mount a persistent disk to the Kubernetes pod and container, which serves as the user&#39;s home directory to store code and data. e.g., /home/coder  When an environment shuts down, the home directory persists. When the environment is restarted, the home directory volume is remounted. Templates can include additional persistent options like network file share that users already use for artifacts in their daily flow.</p>

<h3>Install Additional Python Packages</h3>

<p>DevOps and team leaders can define container or VM images with required languages and kernels like Python and packages. The Terraform template also includes a bash startup script where packages can be installed like a Python package and programs can be automatically started like a code-server (VS Code in a browser) or Jupyter IDE after the development environment build is complete. End users can install additional packages as either part of a personalize script or their own dotfiles repository and may decide to persist these packages like with pip3 install --user argument to the user&#39;s home directory.</p>


A Coder development environment with a Jupyter IDE and a Python notebook open

<h3>Use Any IDE</h3>

<p>Unlike languages like Java that have a very limited set of IDEs that developers will use e.g., JetBrains IntelliJ or Eclipse, Python and data science languages flourish with a long tail of IDE options for specific use cases. e.g., VS Code, PyCharm, RStudio, MATLAB, Jupyter, Airflow, etc.</p>

<p>IDEs like VS Code and PyCharm can be installed locally or operate web-based to communicate with a Coder development environment. Others like Coder&#39;s code-server, Jupyter and Airflow are natively web-based. Finally some IDEs are thick client-based and can be made web-accessible within Coder through a VNC web client like KasmVNC.</p>

<p>Alternative remote development solutions like AWS Cloud9 are a proprietary, non-standard IDE that only operates on AWS and may not appeal or be acceptable to end users.</p>


Infrastructure teams configure Terraform templates to install and start IDEs, clone source code and dotfiles git repositories, and install VS Code extensions

<h3>Clone A Code Repository</h3>

<p>Users want to quickly get in flow when they request a remote development environment build. Data and Infrastructure leads can add a configuration to the Terraform template to either prompt users for a code repository name at build time or just automatically perform a git clone operation on a specific repository as part of the template&#39;s startup script.</p>


End users create development environments with input parameters specified in the Terraform templates

<p>There is also an Open in Coder button that Coder generates which can be included in a repository&#39;s README markdown which when clicked takes the user to a specific Coder deployment, builds a development environment based on a specific template and clones the repository. The result is that with a couple of clicks from within a familiar Git repository web user interface, an end user has a powerful remote development environment with an IDE and repository open and ready to code.</p>


The Open in Coder button in a git source code repository to automatically create a development environment in Coder

<h3>Access to Data Sources</h3>

<p>Data access is easier because Infrastructure teams control the network access with their Coder Kubernetes deployment and other network resources like databases and data lakes. e.g., Snowflake, Microsoft SQL Server, Oracle, Teradata, IBM DB/2 and Dremio. Local development environment access to these data sources is more complicated, with complex VPN configuration and latency and reliability issues with data having to traverse to the last mile of a local computer.</p>

<h3>Access to More Computing Power</h3>

<p>Coder managed development environments run within an enterprise&#39;s server infrastructure, such as Kubernetes or dedicated Virtual Machines. The Terraform template can be hard-wired with compute settings or prompt the user with an approved range of CPU, Memory and Disk at development environment creation. Users are more productive since they can access more compute than imaginable on their local computers. Infrastructure teams benefit from Kubernetes built-in ability to scale up additional cluster nodes and regulate compute issued to each user with resource limits and requests for a lower infrastructure cost posture than dedicated VMs.</p>


End users specify how much CPU, memory and disk required for their remote development environment

<h3>Support Long-Running Tasks In An Ephemeral World</h3>

<p>Infrastructure teams like Coder because they centrally enforce when development environments shutdown if inactive, and therefore saving compute costs. End users want the option to perform long-running tasks like model training and running, without fear of environments shutting off.</p>

<p>With Coder, administrators can enable at the template-level the ability for end users to override the auto-off settings for a development environment, thus ensuring their computing efforts get completed.</p>

<h2>Infrastructure User Challenges</h2>

<h3>Supporting Multiple IDEs</h3>

<p>All IDEs are not the same. Some were built in different eras like Visual Studio, Eclipse and JetBrains or VS Code more recently. They have different dependencies based on the operating system they are installed on and have different formats for customizing and configuring.</p>

<p>Infrastructure teams that support developers with IDEs installed on local computers may spend an inordinate amount of time troubleshooting problems with IDEs, their versions, and dependencies. There can also be challenges with reliably running Python kernels with Jupyter on Microsoft Windows.</p>

<p>With Coder, infrastructure teams can define remote Linux container and VM images that are the basis for end users&#39; development environments. The image includes the required IDEs and specific versions, so the fleet of end users are all running development environments on the same IDEs&#39; versions. End users get their own individual remote development environment with a dedicated Python kernel and no contention with other users.</p>


End users select Terraform templates that they are authorized to use - to build remote development environments

<h3>Data Science Project Growth and the Importance of Source Code Version Control</h3>

<p>As enterprises invest in analytics and data science as a competitive advantage, the number of end users working on projects grow requiring git version control to bring order. Coder provides administrators a secure and easy-to-deploy git integration with GitLab, GitHub, Bitbucket and Azure DevOps via an OAuth Application. Coder will seamlessly intercept end users&#39; git commands with a link to their enterprise&#39; Git provider. Once authenticated, Coder stores the end users&#39; personal OAuth tokens to securely and efficiently authenticate every git action.</p>

<h3>A Common Platform Versus Cloud-based Solutions</h3>

<p>Public cloud providers like GitHub Codespaces, Azure, AWS and Google Cloud have VM and Virtual Desktop remote development environment solutions. They can have a higher cost of ownership because the compute options are limited. For example, if an end user needs more storage, they may have to select the larger environment option that also has more CPU and memory, and therefore a higher cost.</p>

<p>End users and administrators will also have to learn multiple solutions while Coder can run on-premises and on all cloud providers for a lower total cost of ownership.</p>

<h3>Control Costs by Monitoring and Shutting Down Unused Environments</h3>

<p>Having access to more compute with remote development environments makes end users more productive, but can lead to run-away cloud costs if not properly controlled.</p>

<p>Coder empowers administrators to establish auto-off governance controls that stop development environments if unused. Coder considers a development environment in use if there is an active SSH, web IDE or web terminal connection. If an end user mistakenly left a local IDE and SSH connection open, administrators can also set a maximum lifetime value which will shutdown a development environment preventing a Kubernetes pod or VM running forever and running up your enterprise&#39;s cloud bill.</p>

<h3>Secure Your Enterprise&#39;s Intellectual Property</h3>

<p>Continuing to allow end users to use local development environments introduces unnecessary risk of intellectual property loss of code repositories and sensitive data. Coder moves development environments to your enterprise&#39;s secure server infrastructure. Development environments have dedicated, isolated home directories for code repositories and data to be cloned to.</p>

<h2>Next Steps</h2>

<p>If you are with an enterprise and would like to speak with a technical account executive, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">fill out our demonstration form</a> or start a <a href="https://coder.com/trial">30-day complimentary trial</a> of Coder Enterprise. For more information about analytics and data science use cases and Coder, <a href="https://coder.com/solutions/dataops">see our solution sheet.</a></p>


Enterprises are making use of data as a competitive advantage but struggle with quickly setting up development environments and keeping them consistent. Coder eliminates this toil while supporting any analytics, data engineering and data science tooling with end users' remote development environments.

A sea container on a ship of containers, with a development environment - created by DALL E 2

Remove Data Science Bottlenecks with Coder

<h3>Databases and remote development</h3>

<p>Developers and data scientists sometimes need a database as part of their development environment configuration. In addition, they need a UI tool to visually connect to the database to view and manipulate the data.</p>

<p>You could try and smash all of these into one container but chances are you will run into dependency or container UID conflicts. You also may want to leverage each provider&#39;s published container image instead for ease of maintenance.</p>

<p>Coder&#39;s use of an embedded Terraform OSS provisioner and a touch of Kubernetes magic to run multiple containers in a single pod make it possible to build a Coder template that creates multiple containers, each running their respective application. All of this is possible with a flexible remote development environment platform like Coder. Users like developers and data scientists benefit from faster time to their first commit and no environment setup since Coder leverages open standards like Dockerfiles, container images and Kubernetes. DevOps and Platform Engineering benefit from fewer support tickets since these environment configurations, which we call templates, standardize environments across teams.</p>


Caption: Creating a new workspace with a 4 container template on Kubernetes

<h3>PostgreSQL, DBeaver, pgAdmin and Golang</h3>

<p>In this example, we have a Golang app in one container, which also has the Coder agent to communicate with the user&#39;s IDEs and the Coder control plane. The template clones a public Golang app repo and uses environment variables passed to the container to know how to connect to PostgreSQL for making the app&#39;s API calls. We also have a container with PostgreSQL, a container with pgAdmin, and a container with DBeaver.  pgAdmin and DBeaver are database administration tools popular with developers in the enterprise.</p>


Caption: The template's Terraform defining the DBeaver and pgAdmin application icons

<h3>Container UIDs and Persistent Volumes</h3>

<p>The PostgreSQL container needs to run with UID 999 and we specified a persistent volume claim for the container&#39;s directory that stores the database data. This allows the database data to persist if the Coder workspace and Kubernetes pod are stopped.</p>

<p>The DBeaver container has a UID of 0 aka <code>root</code> and also has a persistent volume claim to store database configuration settings defined during the first session. The pgAdmin container has a UID of 5050 and has its own persistent volume as well.</p>


Caption: The template's Terraform defining the containers and UIDs in the Kubernetes pod spec

<h3>Dotfiles, CPU, Memory and Disk Parameters</h3>

<p>At workspace creation, the developer or data scientist selects the template and is prompted for inputs like their dotfiles repository, CPU, memory and disk for each of the four containers. These inputs leverage Coder parameters and are mutable for future adjustments.</p>

<p>Coder templates include a markdown file which is visible in the template UI. In this example, the markdown explains how to use pgAdmin and DBeaver and includes instructions on how to run database migrations and run <code>curl</code> commands to retrieve data from the PostgreSQL database.</p>


Caption: The template's markdown explaining what will be included in the workspace

<h3>Localhost and Container Intercommunication</h3>

<p>Any container in the Kubernetes pod can communicate on <code>localhost.</code> This is how the Golang app, DBeaver and pgAdmin can find the PostgreSQL database. Within the <code>coder_app</code> resource of the template, each IDE references a process running on a port on <code>localhost.</code></p>

<h3>Accessing PostgreSQL in the Development Environment</h3>

<p>After creating the development environment, PostgreSQL, DBeaver and pgAdmin start automatically as defined in the entrypoint of their respective containers. The Coder agent starts in the Golang container. Open DBeaver and pgAdmin using the icons in the Coder workspace UI.</p>


Caption: A running Coder workspace as a Kubernetes pod and 4 containers for Golang, PostgreSQL, DBeaver and pgAdmin

<h3>Running Database Migrations and Accessing PostgreSQL from the Golang app</h3>

<p>In the template&#39;s <code>startup_script</code> a sample Golang app is cloned from GitHub. After the development environment is created, the developer must run a couple scripts in the Golang repo to run migrations to populate the PostgreSQL database. The Golang app also starts and listens on a port for API calls on <code>localhost</code> to add to and query from the database.</p>


Caption: Starting the Golang server and retrieving a row from the authors table

<h3>Accessing PostgreSQL from DBeaver</h3>

<p>DBeaver is a popular database administration tool. It is browser-based so Coder accesses it on a subdomain in a <code>coder_app.</code> Configuration settings like the location and credentials to the PostgreSQL container are stored in a persistent volume claim.</p>


Caption: Connecting to the PostgreSQL database container during initial setup with DBeaver

Caption: Retrieving rows from the persons table with DBeaver

<h3>Accessing PostgreSQL from pgAdmin</h3>

<p>pgAdmin is also a popular database administration tool specific to PostgreSQL. It is browser-based so Coder accesses it on a subdomain in a <code>coder_app.</code> Configuration settings like the location and credentials to the PostgreSQL container are stored in a persistent volume claim.</p>


Caption: The pgAdmin login screen

Caption: Retrieving rows from the persons table with pgAdmin

<h3>Accessing PostgreSQL from <code>psql</code></h3>

<p><code>psql</code> is a terminal-based front-end to PostgreSQL. Users open a web terminal or locally <code>ssh</code> into the development environment to run <code>psql</code> commands. The example installs <code>psql</code> in the <code>startup_script</code> but it could be just as easily installed in the Golang container which the terminal connects to via the Coder agent.</p>


Caption: Retrieving a row of data with the psql utility inside a web terminal

<h3>Source for the Example</h3>

<p>This example template is available from <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/k8s-multi-container">sharkymark&#39;s GitHub v2 template repository.</a></p>


Leveraging the flexibility of Kubernetes and Coder's embedding of a Terraform provisioner in its control plane, developers and data scientists can create powerful remote development environments that include databases and database administration tools in addition to their application container.

PostgreSQL in a container in Kubernetes

Running PostgreSQL, DBeaver and pgAdmin containers in Coder

<h3>Defining &quot;It works on my machine&quot;</h3>

<p>This is a typical conversation with a new prospective customer: they share that they want to solve the &quot;it works on my machine&quot; problem. </p>

<p>Simply put, &quot;It works on my machine&quot; means that a developer or data scientist has written some code that works perfectly fine on their local machine but breaks in a downstream CI pipeline or worse in production. The break or bug is because the development environment had dependencies that didn&#39;t match those downstream. The costs of &quot;it works on my machine&quot; issues are the bug has to be reported back to the developer, who makes the fix to their environment and dependencies and re-pushes the change. Worse, an end customer has a bad experience due to this bug, which can be costly in terms of revenue and brand management. All of this means lost time, costly re-work, and ultimately delay in delivering software to meet the enterprise&#39;s strategic and competitive goals.</p>

<h3>What is Coder?</h3>

<p>Coder is a self-hosted remote development platform that eliminates &quot;it works on my machine&quot; problems because DevOps and Platform Engineering teams can centrally govern and control what images and workspace build configurations are used by developers and data scientists.</p>

<h3>Example: Updating a Go version</h3>

<p>Let me show an example of how to centrally update the Go language version for your developers.</p>


Update the Go version in the container image's Dockerfile

<h3>Update the container image</h3>

<p>First, update the Dockerfile or VM image with the new Golang version. In this example, the Dockerfile specifies the Go version in the <code>curl</code> install string, so a one line change is needed.</p>

<p>Then <code>docker build</code> and <code>docker push</code> the new container image with a tag designating the Go version to the container registry.</p>


Building the container image with a new tag for the Go version

Push the new container image to the container registry

<h3>Update the Coder Terraform template</h3>

<p>Next, update the Coder template with the new image tag. A Coder template is a Terraform file that specifies how the workspace will be built including the compute and container image to use. Then use the Coder CLI to push the new template version to your Coder deployment. Again, a one line change only to the Coder template.</p>

<p>If DevOps uses the same image tag when they update the Go version, setting the pod spec image pull policy to Always in the template will ensure the image is updated in the workspace.</p>


Change the Coder Terraform template and push the new template version to your Coder deployment

The Coder template's Kubernetes pod spec is configured to always check if the image has changed, in case the updated Go image used the same tag

<h3>Notify the Coder user</h3>

<p>Within the Coder deployment, any user with a workspace based on the updated template will be notified in the Coder UI that their workspace is out of date.</p>

<p>If the same image tag is used, no change to the template is needed, and the workspace will grab the new image on the next workspace build.</p>


The developer is notified that their Go workspace is out of date

<h3>Summary</h3>

<p>One of the benefits of deploying Coder in your enterprise is eliminating the &quot;it works on my machine&quot; problem. When your enterprise has hundreds and thousands of developers and data scientists, there are significant cost savings in terms of eliminating re-work and potentially monetary damage to revenue and your enterprise&#39;s brand.</p>

<p>As an aside, other benefits to justify an enterprise&#39;s investment in Coder include removing of source code and data from insecure desktops, getting access to more compute in cloud infrastructure, and eliminating development setup and thus shortening time to code contribution and increasing developer productivity.</p>


The "It works on my machine" problem costs enterprises significant cost related to bug re-work, delay, and potential revenue and brand impact. Coder's self-hosted remote development platform eliminates the "it works on my machine" problem by easily and centrally updating images and templates.

"It works on my machine" explained

<h3>Remote Development with local IDEs</h3>

<p>Some developers prefer to do remote development with their locally installed IDEs like VS Code. Coder has supported that for several years with a combination of locally configuring SSH to their Coder workspace and using Microsoft&#39;s Remote - SSH VS Code extension.</p>

<p>Besides the manual steps of setting it up, developers would need to re-run the SSH configuration step if they create new remote workspaces in Coder which involves executing a Coder CLI command <code>coder config-ssh</code> to create host entries in the local <code>~/.ssh/config</code> file for each new Coder workspace to tell VS Code how to connect to Coder.</p>

<p>Coder eliminates this setup with our <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=coder.coder-remote">Coder Remote VS Code extension.</a></p>

<h3>Benefits of using local VS Code</h3>

<p>First, a local VS Code IDE can connect to Microsoft&#39;s Extension Marketplace for the largest availability of extensions to keep developers in flow and be productive.</p>

<p>Second, a local VS Code IDE gives all of the keyboard shortcuts that developers expect. Web IDEs like <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">Coder&#39;s popular code-server project</a> lose a portion of keyboard shortcuts to the web browser.</p>

<p>Third, the developer experience is best and the remote workspace latency is the lowest with a locally installed VS Code IDE.</p>

<p>Finally, developers just like to use local tools. It&#39;s familiar to them and yet Coder provides environment consistency and greater compute access by running these development environments as Coder-managed workspaces in enterprises&#39; private or public cloud infrastructure.</p>


A local VS Code IDE connected to a remote Coder workspace running a Node React application

<h3>Connect to Coder from VS Code</h3>

<p>If developers want to stay completely within VS Code and not use the Coder Web UI, the command palette provides the commands to authenticate to Coder and even start workspaces that are stopped.</p>


Enter the Coder Access URL to login

Paste your API Key retrieved after authenticating in the Coder Web UI

Start a stopped workspace, all from local VS Code!

The Terraform template build log visible within local VS Code as the workspace starts

A local VS Code IDE connected to a remote Coder workspace designated in the green box with connection latency metrics

<h3>Open local VS Code from the Coder Web UI</h3>

<p>Other developers may want to start their daily flow inside the Coder Web UI. If SSH access is enabled by the Coder administrator, a VS Code Desktop appears in each workspace dashboard.</p>


Create a Node.JS React workspace from a template and in this case a container image that will provision in a Kubernetes namespace

The VS Code Desktop icon will open a locally-installed VS Code

A local VS Code IDE securely connected to a remote Coder workspace using an API Key and the Coder CLI downloaded and managed by the Coder Remote VS Code extension

<h3>Summary</h3>

<p>Coder&#39;s Coder Remote VS Code extension is another example of how Coder&#39;s self-hosted remote development platform eliminates developer onboarding and makes developers more productive than manually setting up development environments.</p>

<p>Innovations like Coder&#39;s VS Code extension unlock developer productivity and drive developer acceptance of remote development as the new way to build software.</p>

<p><a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/ides#visual-studio-code">Learn more</a> or <a href="https://youtu.be/OlFLZfGx8vw">watch a short demonstration video</a> on the Coder Youtube channel.</p>


Coder has developed a VS Code extension that gives developers a remote development experience entirely within their locally-installed VS Code IDE.

The Coder Remote VS Code Extension

<p>Coder is a remote development platform which means developers, data engineers and data scientists will use it in their daily flow. DevOps teams that manage a Coder deployment also want to ensure Coder adheres to corporate theming and system admin notification standards.</p>

<p>Coder takes that to a next-level by providing emoji support for templates, groups, and icons used for IDEs in a workspace as well as a site-wide organization logo and banner for notifications.</p>

<h2>Templates</h2>

<p><a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/templates">Templates</a> are written in Terraform and describe the infrastructure for Coder workspaces such as Kubernetes pods, Docker containers, or virtual machines.</p>

<p>To make your templates pop, Coder lets template administrators choose from a list of emojis or add URLs to their favorite icons. Transparent backgrounds work best to blend with the Coder dark theme.</p>


Adding emojis to a Terraform-based Coder template

A plethora of workspaces with template emojis

<h2>Workspaces</h2>

<p><a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/workspaces">Workspaces</a>, which are based on templates, can surface icons for apps and IDE icons on the workspace user interface, using the coder_app resource in the template. Coder comes with common IDE icons to add here. e.g., IntelliJ, VS Code, PyCharm, GoLand, Jupyter.</p>


A JetBrains CLion IDE icon with a workspace using the Rust logo and container image.

<h2>Groups</h2>

<p><a href="https://coder.com/docs/v2/latest/admin/groups">Groups</a>, which are how Coder users are segmented and granted access to templates, can have emojis too.</p>


Several groups in Coder with personalized icons

<h2>Your Organization&#39;s Logo</h2>

<p>By default, the iconic Coder logo is in the top left corner of the Coder user interface. Coder humbly thinks organizations should proudly paint their logo for developers to enjoy as they create code.</p>


Adding an organization's logo to Coder

<h2>Service Banners</h2>

<p>There are use cases to publish a banner at the top of the Coder user interface to notify users.</p>

<p>In public sector settings, especially defense and intelligence where Coder operates in classified settings, a color-coded classification level can be added.</p>

<p>DevOps teams who manage a Coder deployment need to do upgrades and routine maintenance. Maintenance notifications can be also added to Coder to tell users when the Coder deployment will be unavailable.</p>


Add a service or classification site-wide banner

Personalizing Coder

<p>Microsoft Corporation in many ways is one of the founders of developer tools. <a href="https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/">Visual Studio</a> (not to be confused with <a href="https://code.visualstudio.com/">Visual Studio Code</a> &quot;VS Code&quot; an open-source IDE which <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">Coder&#39;s code-server project</a> is based on) has been around since 1997 with thirteen releases including 2022 in November 2021.</p>

<h2>One IDE, multiple languages</h2>

<p>The concept is one Integrated Development Environment &quot;IDE&quot; can be used for multiple languages, so beginning with Visual C++, Visual Basic and Visual FoxPro. Over the years as new languages and frameworks emerge from Microsoft, support expanded to Visual J++, J#, C#, the .NET Framework including ASP.NET. <a href="https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#integrated-development-environment">The Stack Overflow 2022 Developer Survey</a> lists Visual Studio as the #2 IDE behind VS Code at 32%.</p>

<p>Visual Studio requires a Microsoft Windows operating system to run, so for remote development to be an option, the remote development environment must be able to run Windows and have a way to visual connect to it and the IDE.</p>

<p>In Coder v2, we expanded our infrastructure integration ecosystem by embedding Terraform as the declarative language to define workspaces and a provisioner runner to build workspaces. This means a development environment in Coder can run Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio, on any VM infrastructure they prefer. e.g., AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, etc. In the following <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/gcp-rdp-visual-studio">example</a>, our Terraform configuration, what we call a template, will be on Google Cloud. </p>

<h2>Input variables</h2>

<p>Your DevOps or development team leads may hard-code these values in the Terraform template, but you can prompt the developer in the UI at workspace (our term for a development environment) creation, for the cloud region, machine type, Windows and Visual Studio releases.</p>


The Terraform template section for cloud, Windows and IDE inputs

The Create Workspace UI surfacing the template input variables

<p>The beauty of <a href="https://www.terraform.io/">Terraform</a> is infrastructure is just a resource block, so in this case a Google Compute resource where the input variables like region, machine type, and Windows OS machine image are specified.</p>


The Terraform resource for a Google Cloud VM

<h2>Bootstrap scripts</h2>

<p>Within the Google Compute resource, you run PowerShell commands to install a package manager and run additional PowerShell commands in the Coder agent&#39;s init_script to install Visual Studio. </p>


PowerShell invoked at workspace creation to add a package manager and run the Coder init_script

<p>There are some other housekeeping items like enabling the <a href="https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/troubleshoot/windows-server/remote/understanding-remote-desktop-protocol">Remote Desktop Protocol</a> &quot;RDP&quot; and in Windows 2022, the Administrator user is disabled by default and a password needs to be created. Notice the Terraform input variables speckled amongst the PowerShell commands for items like an Administrator password default and the Visual Studio release.</p>


The Coder startup_script with PowerShell installing Visual Studio

<h2>Metadata to surface in the Coder Workspace UI</h2>

<p>Coder has Terraform resources as well like coder_metadata to surface helpful items for the user like the default Administrator password, the region and machine type of the cloud VM-based workspace and the releases of Windows and Visual Studio installed.</p>


Workspace metadata to surface in the Coder UI to help developers

<h2>Markdown to help developers</h2>

<p>Each Coder template includes a markdown file which is shown in the Coder UI at workspace creation to help the developer understand what is included in the workspace. DevOps or the development team lead would write this and make them specific to their team and organization.</p>


The workspace's markdown file to inform developers at workspace creation

<h2>A Running Windows and Visual Studio Workspace in Coder</h2>


The workspace UI in Coder running PowerShell session and instantiated from the Coder Terminal button

<h2>Forward the RDP port to a local machine</h2>

<p>While browser-based RDP approaches like Apache Guacamole can work, this example is using a Microsoft RDP client to connect to the Coder Windows and Visual Studio workspace. To complete that connection, you need to forward the RDP port from the Coder workspace to your local machine using the <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss/latest/install/install.sh">Coder CLI</a>, which by the way is the same as the Coder server binary. We did that for virality reasons. i.e., anyone trying out Coder should be able to fire up their own personal remote development instance.</p>


The Coder CLI invoking a subcommand to forward the workspace's RDP port to a different local port

The Microsoft RDP client with the forwarded port on localhost for remotely accessing the Coder workspace

<h2>Accessing Microsoft Windows &amp; Visual Studio</h2>

<p>After connecting with the RDP client and entering the Administrator password, Windows appears and you can start Visual Studio. Your own private Windows machine in the cloud.</p>


Microsoft Windows and Visual Studio running in a Coder workspace

<h2>Summary Thoughts and Why Coder</h2>

<p>While it is helpful that we can demonstrate running both the Microsoft Windows operating system and a Microsoft Visual Studio IDE in a Coder workspace, the real business benefit and differentiator is that an enterprise can invest in one remote development platform like Coder and have it serve multiple developer use cases, e.g., Java, Node, Go, C#, C++, Python, which is a lower total cost of ownership and a better return on your remote development investment.</p>

<p>Developers and data scientists can learn one remote development platform while still using the same IDEs they use today on local machines, so there are lower training requirements. DevOps and Platform Engineering teams only have to learn and manage one remote development platform. Information Security and Technology Risk teams only have to do penetration tests and review one remote development platform. Cloud cost management teams can rest easy knowing Coder provides auto-off and resource quotas to restrict cloud costs.</p>


Unlike alternative cloud or git provider remote development offerings, Coder can run any cloud, OS, Git, or IDE

<p>The alternative solutions on the market are pay-as-you-go that may only support one cloud provider, one operating system, one Git provider, or one IDE, potentially leading to multiple solutions required to meet an enterprise&#39;s remote software development needs.</p>

<p>See the public repositories for the <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/gcp-rdp-visual-studio">Google Cloud</a> and <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/aws-rdp-visual-studio">AWS</a> Windows and Visual Studio template examples to start building your own.</p>

<p><a href="https://coder.com/contact">Contact Sales</a> if you have a remote development initiative in the works or try out Coder v2&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">OSS</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/trial">Enterprise paid</a> offerings.</p>


Microsoft Windows & Visual Studio in Coder

<p>One thing I enjoy about interacting with prospects and customers - is listening to what really matters to them.</p>

<p>One item they consistently ask Coder about, is how to control their on-premises or more importantly their public cloud computing costs.</p>

<p>When you move development environments off of local machines like laptops to server-based infrastructure, the computing cost required to power IDEs and development environment tasks like builds, can quickly add up in your public cloud infrastructure.</p>

<h2>Always on means always billing</h2>

<p>The ease at which developers can spin up cloud resources like Kubernetes pods, containers and VMs keeps developers productive. Public clouds charge for what you use, so unless you remember to stop resources, you and your organization will be billed for usage even if the computing resources are idle. </p>

<p>Public cloud providers are also starting to offer development environment solutions which are basically VMs with some 3rd party IDE integration to drive cloud compute consumption. Examples include <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/codecatalyst/">Amazon CodeCatalyst</a>, <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">GitHub Codespaces</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/#overview">Microsoft Dev Box</a>, or <a href="https://cloud.google.com/workstations">Google Cloud Workstations</a>. The computing options are limited which can lead to a sub-optimal and expensive experience where you have to use the larger instance type to get more storage but do not need more CPU cores or memory. At the end of the day, there is no financial incentive to provide controls to limit compute costs in these public cloud solutions.</p>

<h2>Auto-stop development environments</h2>

<p>In Coder OSS, we provide controls for developers to <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss/latest/workspaces#auto-stop">auto-stop their development environments</a> after a predefined amount of time. If a developer is actively using the workspace e.g., an SSH connection is active with a locally-installed IDE, a browser-based IDE or a web terminal, Coder will not stop the development environment (and interrupt the developer&#39;s flow) and check in another hour for inactivity.</p>

<p>The auto-stop feature is very important when deploying development environments as VMs which have dedicated compute for each developer and therefore are more expensive than containers that run in a shared infrastructure like Kubernetes.</p>


The Coder development environment UI, where the auto-stop is set to 4 hours

<h2>Sizing the remote development platform</h2>

<p>During evaluations of Coder, DevOps leaders often ask Coder for advice on how to size their Kubernetes infrastructure. The answer is &quot;it depends&quot; since key input variables are the compute required for an average development environment and the number of users and development environments anticipated to perform remote development.</p>

<p>Once you know these input variables, you model out with different machine types e.g., an AWS m5.4xlarge VM with 16 vCPUs and 64 GiB, to determine the number of Kubernetes nodes (i.e., VMs) required to support the Coder control plane and development environment computing. Development environment storage needs to be accounted for, but tends to be the shortest leg of the stool compared to CPU and memory. There is an external PostgreSQL database to store state in Coder, so that has to be sized as well based on user and load volume.</p>


Input variables to consider when calculating public cloud nodes needed to power your remote development environments

<h3>Resource Requests and Limits</h3>

<p>Additional input variables like development environment auto-stop settings and Kubernetes pod resource requests impact the Kubernetes node sizing.</p>

<p>For example, a developer may think they are getting 8 CPU cores and 16 GiB of memory, but adjusting the <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/manage-resources-containers/">resource requests</a> in a workspace Terraform-based template&#39;s pod spec actually gives less initial compute to the developer, thus saving you cloud cost.  </p>

<p>Lower resource requests means less Kubernetes nodes are required to meet the development environments needs since developers typically spend the majority of their work day in the editor of the IDE typing code which has lower compute resource needs. If developers need more compute, e.g., a Bazel or Maven build or starting a Machine Learning model training job, the development environment will burst to the CPU cores and memory <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/configuration/manage-resources-containers/">limits</a> originally specified. </p>


A Coder Terraform-based template configured to initially give 2 CPU cores and 2 GiB of memory, but burst-able to 8 CPU cores and 16 GiB of memory.

<h3>Autoscaling Nodes</h3>

<p>Kubernetes will also automatically scale up more nodes to accommodate new development environment creation if existing development environments exhaust the node&#39;s compute. Conversely, as the work day ends, Kubernetes automatically scales down the nodes since development environments are being manually or automatically stopped with the aforementioned auto-off feature.</p>

<p>DevOps can apply labels to development environments running as Kubernetes pods and leverage Coder&#39;s audit log API to build their dashboards to trend which groups and users are consuming the most cloud compute for change back purposes.</p>

<h2>Workspace Quotas</h2>

<p>Within templates, DevOps and administrators can specify workspace resource costs in denominations of your choice. e.g., a VM template is 75 units, a Kubernetes pod template is 25 units. At the Group-level, quota allowances are defined. e.g., 100 units. When developers create workspaces based on templates, we check if these <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss/latest/admin/quotas">quotas</a> have been exceeded and prevent additional workspace creation if exceeded. e.g., If a developer in a group with a 100 units budget, already has 1 VM (75 units) and 1 Kubernetes workspace (25 units), and attempted to create a second Kubernetes workspace, they will be blocked since 125 units is greater than their allowed 100 units.</p>

<h2>Next Steps</h2>

<p>If you are an enterprise interested in self-hosting a remote development platform, please <a href="https://coder.com/contact">contact Sales</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a demo</a>. Otherwise if you are technical, try out Coder OSS <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss/latest/install/install.sh">on your local machine</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss/latest/install">your server infrastructure</a>. You can also <a href="https://coder.com/trial">start a trial of the Enterprise version</a>.</p>


Controlling Remote Development Costs on Public Clouds

<p>Coder has learned from serving many agencies in the US Department of Defense, Intelligence Community, and Department of Energy why remote development is required. Simply put, developers and data scientists in these settings require approvals to install any developer tools on a local computer. These approvals can take weeks which means developers are not productive and agencies are not meeting their mission needs. With remote development solutions like Coder, agencies can install Coder in their air-gapped infrastructure and get approval for development environments to run in Coder. Lengthy developer tool approvals are eliminated.</p>

<h2>The Transition From Sole Source to Multi Cloud-Computing Contracts</h2>

<p>Last week, the US Defense Department awarded cloud-computing contracts to four companies: Amazon, Google, Microsoft and Oracle. The contracts are for a new cloud architecture called the <a href="https://www.defense.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/3243483/department-names-vendors-to-provide-joint-warfighting-cloud-capability/">Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability</a> and are valued at $9B through 2028.</p>

<p>The decision to award the contracts to four companies was a reversal for the US Defense Department which had previously awarded a $10B cloud-computing to Microsoft, called Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure, known as JEDI.</p>

<p>Albeit political and equitable to share the compute-computing needs of the US government across cloud providers, it raises total cost of ownership and vendor lock-in risk with remote development solutions.</p>

<p>In the US intelligence community, a similar event occurred with the 2020 award of the <a href="https://www.bizjournals.com/washington/news/2020/11/20/microsoft-aws-among-c2e-cloud-contract-awardees.html">Commercial Cloud Enterprise contract</a>, known as C2E, to Amazon, Google, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. There was a previous award in 2013 to Amazon called Commercial Cloud Services, known as C2S, for $600M.</p>


<h2>Availability of Remote Development on Government Clouds</h2>

<p>Many of these cloud providers offer Software-as-a-Service &quot;SaaS&quot; remote development solutions including <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/codecatalyst/">Amazon CodeCatalyst</a>, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/">AWS Cloud9</a>, and <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/">Amazon WorkSpaces</a>, <a href="https://cloud.google.com/workstations">Google Cloud Workstations</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">Microsoft&#39;s GitHub Codespaces</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/#overview">Microsoft Dev Box</a>, and <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-desktop/">Azure Virtual Desktop</a>, all run on their respective public clouds but some of these solutions may not be available on the providers&#39; isolated government data centers. For example, GitHub Codespaces only works with the GitHub public cloud. Point solutions like Gitpod which announced initial availability only on AWS, or GitLab&#39;s eventual cloud solution, may or may not operate on a government cloud. </p>

<p>If a Department of Defense of Intelligence Community member wants a remote development solution, it may have to select more than one solution or be locked into only one solution on a specific cloud and which may not meet the requirements of all of an institution&#39;s developers. Continuing with unproductive and insecure local development or clunky virtual desktop development may be the only software development environment option.</p>

<h2>One Developer Learning Multiple Remote Development Solutions</h2>

<p>In classified settings, there are multiple networks and therefore potentially multiple clouds to access data for a developer to do their daily job. Coder has many customers across the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community where more than one deployment of Coder exists on these networks. If a government institution participates in either of the multi-cloud contracts, one developer may have to learn 4 different cloud providers&#39; remote development solutions to do their daily work.</p>

<h2>Coder, One Platform for Multiple Government Clouds</h2>


The 5 major public cloud providers running development environments in a single Coder deployment

<p>Because Coder is self-hosted software, government institutions participating in the JWCC or C2E contracts, can deploy Coder across any of the participating cloud providers. Their developers and administrators only have to learn one remote development platform. That means lower total cost of ownership and lower training requirements.</p>

<p>If you are a systems integrator or government institution, and have requirements for a remote development solution in your work program, please <a href="https://coder.com/demo">contact Sales</a> for a consultation and demonstration.</p>

<p>Feel free to try out Coder v2&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">OSS</a> or request <a href="https://coder.com/trial">a v2 Enterprise trial license</a>.</p>

<p>Both v2 OSS and Enterprise are supported in our <a href="https://discord.gg/coder">Discord</a> and <a href="hhttps://cdr.co/join-community">Slack</a> channels or <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder/issues">GitHub Issues</a>.</p>


Remote Development and Government Cloud-Computing Contracts

<p>Everything is moving to the cloud. Enterprises want to manage their infrastructure. Those two sentences are 180 degree opposites at first glance, but when it comes to remote development environments, there is a paradox which has a compelling, underlying enterprise truth.</p>

<p>It is true that the public cloud is a thing. AWS, Azure, Google Cloud, IBM, Oracle, Digital Ocean and others are ubiquitous in small and very large enterprises. In fact, Coder&#39;s first slide in our pitch deck says that enterprise software has moved to the cloud, why is software development still on laptops?</p>


The first slide of Coder's pitch deck

<h2>Public Cloud Scale and Innovation</h2>

<p>Public clouds offer many advantages over on-premises infrastructure (where an enterprise purchases or leases servers and networking). Public cloud providers are more advanced than enterprises. e.g., AWS and Google Cloud leveraging years of experience maintaining and scaling respective eCommerce, Search and Video services. Public cloud providers also innovate at a much faster rate. e.g., Kubernetes as a public cloud service like AWS EKS, Azure AKS, or Google Cloud GKE, are easier to configure, which is beneficial to remote development platforms like Coder which can run on Kubernetes.</p>

<h2>Remote Development Environments in Public Cloud</h2>

<p>Coder <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss">OSS</a> and <a href="https://coder.com/pricing">Enterprise</a> let enterprises of any size centrally build, manage, and secure development environments on enterprises&#39; public cloud and on-premises infrastructure. <a href="https://coder.com/blog/github-codespaces-coder-and-enterprise-customers#:%7E:text=a%20popular%20selection.-,Cloud%20Migration,-Without%20exception%2C%20all">As discussed in a previous Coder blog post</a>, enterprises are all in various states of transition from on-premises to public cloud. Coder provides this future-proof approach where both developers still isolated to on-premises infrastructure, and developers already building software that integrates with public cloud, can use one remote development platform to meet the entire enterprises&#39; software development requirements.</p>

<p>I have large enterprise customers explain that isolation of developers by network, vis-a-vis on-premises and public cloud, is normal. One enterprise has signed a multi-year public cloud provider agreement, but shared it will take a couple years for their GitHub Enterprise solution to pass tech risk and information security reviews before developers can even access it. In other words, Coder will initially support all developers in their on-premises and eventually support developers on their public cloud infrastructure.</p>

<p>Contrast Coder&#39;s &quot;neutral Switzerland&quot; approach to alternative remote development solutions that only run on public clouds as Software-as-a-Service &quot;SaaS&quot;. AWS&#39;s <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/codecatalyst/">Amazon CodeCatalyst</a>, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/cloud9/">AWS Cloud9</a>, and <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/workspaces/">Amazon WorkSpaces</a>, <a href="https://cloud.google.com/workstations">Google Cloud Workstations</a>, and Microsoft&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">GitHub Codespaces</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/#overview">Microsoft Dev Box</a>, and <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/virtual-desktop/">Azure Virtual Desktop</a>, all run on their respective public clouds. Some day, <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/editor/remote_development/">GitLab will probably have a SaaS remote development solution</a> and we understand <a href="https://www.gitpod.io/">Gitpod</a> is moving completely to single-tenant and multi-tenant public cloud SaaS solutions.</p>

<p>Enterprises with one or more of these clouds will have to learn different solutions. If on-premises is a requirement, another solution will be required for remote development.</p>

<p>By the way, yes that was not a typo, Amazon and Microsoft have multiple remote development solutions. </p>

<h2>Self-hosting in a public cloud</h2>

<p>Here lies the paradox outlined upfront. Enterprises are moving workloads to public cloud providers. The evidence so far from Coder&#39;s large enterprise customers e.g., financial institutions, asset management firms, hedge funds, US government agencies, professional services and outsourcing firms, retailers, insurers, software providers, and more - is that they would like to self-host remote development platforms like Coder in their public clouds.</p>


Any public cloud as a development environment in Coder

<p>One reason is control. Their public cloud infrastructure is locked down to meet regulatory and security requirements, where SaaS may not meet their stringent requirements.</p>

<p>Additionally, development environments frequently require access to private networks, storage buckets, or other resources inside an organization’s cloud infrastructure. Coder can run inside private networks, giving developers fast and secure access to cloud resources without opening firewalls.</p>

<p>A second reason is total cost of ownership. Cloud and SaaS remote development offerings are basically cloud-based virtual machines which have higher prices. Controls to limit cost like shutting down or packing development environments closely on VMs are not there, most likely by design. Self-hosting Coder gives enterprises full control over how development environments are sized and how compute is shared. These types of controls can provide more efficient use of public cloud spend.</p>

<p>A third reason is developer tooling choice. Some of these SaaS and public cloud offerings are limited to specific git, IDE,<a href="https://coder.com/blog/lessons-learned-from-v1-and-oss-to-enterprise-editions#:%7E:text=v2%20Innovation%20%231%3A%20Abstracting%20Dev%20Environment%20Compute"> and development environment infrastructure.</a> Coder can work with any git, IDE, or infrastructure e.g., Windows, Linux VMs, Kubernetes pods, or Docker containers.</p>

<h2>Summary</h2>

<p>Coder believes remote development is moving to the public cloud, and enterprises will manage Coder in a self-hosted way for better security and cost control.</p>

<p>Both v2 OSS and Enterprise are supported in our <a href="https://discord.gg/coder">Discord</a> and <a href="https://cdr.co/join-community">Slack</a> channels or <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder/issues">GitHub Issues</a>.</p>

<p>Feel free to try out Coder v2&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">OSS</a> or contact sales <a href="https://coder.com/demo">for a demo</a> or a <a href="https://coder.com/trial">v2 Enterprise trial license</a>.</p>


The Self-Hosting Paradox

<p>Coder&#39;s going through a growing up phase. An analogy is like high school or secondary school, where freshman and sophomores often are green or overly confident without experience. Coder is like a junior or senior, with 3 years of enterprise experience with the cognitive awareness of what works, doesn&#39;t work, and more importantly what the market needs, but without arrogance. That&#39;s experience.</p>

<h2>What we learned</h2>

<p>In late 2019, Coder released a remote development environment platform where development environments were Kubernetes pods based on images that team leads built with the frameworks and IDEs that developers needed. While there was some installation friction if an enterprise did not have Kubernetes experience, Coder v1 basically worked perfectly once installed. You point it at a container registry and a development environment magically built and developers and data scientists could be in a local or web IDE in minutes and coding. Productivity, environment consistency, and source code and data safety achieved. Information security teams were happy since Coder made development environment isolation a core principle, and enforced isolation with network policies which contrasted with some competitors who encouraged features like sharing environments with a link which is a big no-no in large enterprises.</p>


Coder v1 - Close-sourced and Dev environments as only Kubernetes pods

<p>However, with simplicity Coder made opinions and design decisions that impacted flexibility and configuration. Everything was a Kubernetes pod. What if a VM was preferred? Thank you, drive through. We couldn&#39;t help you.</p>

<p>What if a container team wanted to mount shared volumes, or apply annotations or let admission controllers and mutating webhooks do some enterprise magic, Coder got in the way. It was doable but required configuration.</p>


v1 Go source code creating the pod spec

<h2>Junior year, introducing Coder v2</h2>

<p>I lead the sales and customer success organization at Coder and we noticed these patterns. Feedback to our co-founders led to a conscious and monumental design decision, that Coder needed a v2 with an innovative approach to address the limitations that only Coder could see since we have success with enterprises that chose Coder for their remote development environment strategy.</p>

<h2>Freshmen, Sophomores, 5th Year Seniors and Remote Development</h2>

<p>It is interesting to me to watch new offerings like <a href="https://techcrunch.com/2022/10/11/google-opens-up-workspace-with-new-integrations-and-apis/">Google&#39;s Cloud Workstations</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/#overview">Microsoft&#39;s Dev Box</a> and <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">GitHub&#39;s Codespaces</a> - a.ka. freshmen and sophomores, which are innovations in their own right, but are basically purpose-built for some underlying pre-existing technology that fuels large revenue contributions. GitLab, in its transparency mode, <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/editor/remote_development/">maintains a strategy</a> for remote development and their Web IDE.</p>

<p>Some examples are Codespaces drives GitHub git service usage and Microsoft Azure consumption, Cloud Workstations drive Google Cloud consumption, or Dev Box drives Microsoft Azure consumption.</p>

<p>I guess we can round out this analogy with <a href="https://developers.redhat.com/products/openshift-dev-spaces/overview">Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces</a> (formerly known as Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces) is the 5th year senior who has been around the longest, which does not mean the market leader, and is bundled in their OpenShift Kubernetes platform.</p>

<p>The solutions may have some early adopters but probably do not have real deployment experience where developer infrastructure leadership are standardizing on them, since each has technological compromises that prevent them from enterprise rollout. e.g., Does an entire enterprise use only GitHub SaaS, or only Azure or Google Cloud compute, or only use the VS Code IDE? Probably not.</p>

<h2>Back to Coder v2 and junior year</h2>

<p>So Coder designed v2 with a few guiding principles that are both differentiating and value-add to enterprises:</p>

<p>v2 Innovation #1: Abstracting Dev Environment Compute</p>

<p>By abstracting compute from development environments, enterprises can make these environments either a <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/">Kubernetes pod</a>, a <a href="https://www.docker.com/resources/what-container/">container</a> on a Docker host, or a traditional and powerful <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_machine">VM</a>. Development environment OS choice and lighter-weight compute platforms became a possibility.</p>


Workspaces in Coder v2 as VMs, Kubernetes pods, and Docker containers

<p>v2 Innovation #2: 100% Control over the Kubernetes pod spec</p>

<p>In v2, enterprise container teams now have complete control over the <a href="https://registry.terraform.io/providers/hashicorp/kubernetes/latest/docs/resources/pod">Kubernetes pod spec</a>. Mounting multiple volumes, 1 to N containers, annotation and admission control flexibility are possible with minimal configuration.</p>


The Kubernetes pod spec in a Coder Terraform-based template

<p>v2 Innovation #3: Dev Environments as Code - via <a href="https://www.terraform.io/">Terraform</a></p>

<p>The first two innovations are possible because v2 ships with Terraform OSS. Dev environments are specified in Terraform code and provisioned with Terraform runners. v2 enterprise paid features allow enterprises to deploy these runners in isolated networks and scale out to support large developer populations.</p>


The Coder Provider on the HashiCorp Terraform Registry

<p>I equate these three v2 innovations to Coder crossing the chasm, historically between DevOps/Platform Engineering infrastructure teams and developers. Infrastructure can now more easily support developers, and developers get a reliable, scalable platform to do their daily coding workflow.</p>

<h2>v2 OSS and the Business Value of v2 Enterprise</h2>

<p>When we set out to build v2, we had a vision that v2 can be organically discovered and used across individual users, students, small, medium to large enterprises. This is how <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">our code-server OSS project</a> (VS Code in a browser) started and continues to grow today with over 57k GitHub stars.</p>

<p>So what do you open-source? Well, our guiding principle was and is quite simple: any remote development functionality that is required for a developer, data engineer, or data scientist&#39;s flow, should be in v2 OSS.</p>

<p>Define a template (the configuration-as-code in Terraform that maps out a development environment), build a development environment (we call them workspaces), perform git operations like clone a repo and push a branch, open any IDE, either locally with SSH or in a browser, port forward to a local machine or in a browser to view your application - these are sample actions that developers need and are in v2 OSS.</p>


A Coder workspace, created and maintained with Coder v2 OSS

<p>Then what do you close-source and require a fee-based license? Well, our counter-weight guiding principle is simple as well: Functionality that enables enterprises&#39; developer infrastructure, platform engineering, DevOps, compliance, and information security departments, are available in v2 Enterprise, Coder&#39;s fee-based licensed product offering.</p>


Audit Logs - an v2 Enterprise feature for centralized governance and control

<p>These enterprise departments manage developers at scale which drives the expected benefits of remote development environments like contributing code on day 1, securing intellectual property like source code and sensitive data, auditing developer and Coder administrator activity, making developers more productive and staying in flow, and enforcing governance and standards with consistent, reproducible development environments.</p>

<p>Here are explanations of some of the major v2 Enterprise features:</p>

<h3>High Availability</h3>

<p>v2 OSS is great for small teams, but Coder can only scale up to the compute available on the VM it&#39;s running on. With HA, user, build, workspace, and API load can be shared across multiple coderd binaries/pods. Large enterprises require this feature to deliver a highly available and scalable remote development platform to their developers.</p>


Specifying 5 instances of Coder's control plane in the helm chart

<h3>Workspace Quotas</h3>

<p>When workspaces move to an enterprise&#39;s on-premises or cloud infrastructure, hardware and cloud costs can dramatically increase as compute is moved off laptops. Administrators define costs at the template-level, and user allowances at the group-level. At the time of a workspace build, Coder checks if the workspace compute request exceeds the user&#39;s total allowances and prevents the build.</p>


<h3>Groups</h3>

<p>Consistent development environments and security controls - requires groups. Users are assigned to groups, and templates are permissioned to specific groups, thus enforcing strict controls over what workspace types people can build. This also protects compute costs by preventing users from creating workspaces that they are not authorized to build.</p>


<h3>Browser-Only Mode</h3>

<p>Regulated industries like financial services and the public sector often do not allow SSH for various security reasons. This enterprise feature lets administrators disable SSH thus preventing users from connecting locally installed IDEs and local terminal sessions to Coder, which may have a higher exfiltration risk. Web IDEs like code-server, Jupyter, RDP, and VNC are still available.</p>

<h3>Audit Logging</h3>

<p>Large enterprises need to demonstrate controls over platforms like Coder. Audit logging captures all actions within Coder for both developers and administrators.</p>


Coder v2 Enterprise feature: Audit logging

<h3>SCIM</h3>

<p><a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/System_for_Cross-domain_Identity_Management">SCIM</a> is an open standard for automatically provisioning and de-provisioning user identities. This enterprise feature lets organizations make better utilization of their Coder license spend by suspending users no longer in the enterprise&#39;s SSO.</p>

<h3>Isolated Runners</h3>

<p>Enterprises have isolated networks for certain developers. Instead of installing multiple deployments of Coder in each enclave, isolated runners aka external provisioner daemons, can start, securely building workspaces, while still communicating with the primary Coder control plane outside the enclaves.</p>

<h3>Support</h3>

<p>OSS users are only entitled to docs and best-effort <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder/issues">GitHub issues</a>, <a href="https://discord.gg/coder">Discord</a>, and <a href="https://cdr.co/join-community">Slack</a> community support. Enterprises in a potential revenue-event sales cycle with Coder, receive support on OSS and enterprise features. This would continue if an enterprise enters into a commercial arrangement with Coder.</p>


Coder's Discord channel for collaboration and technical Q&A

<p>In summary, Coder v2 OSS gives individuals and enterprises the ability to install, deploy, and benefit from remote development environments with no road block or interaction with Coder&#39;s sales and support organization. This unlocks velocity and time-to-value.</p>

<p>As teams and enterprises want to support more developers with centralized security and governance controls, they can try out and upgrade to v2 Enterprise.</p>

<p>Both v2 OSS and Enterprise are supported in our <a href="https://discord.gg/coder">Discord</a> and <a href="https://cdr.co/join-community">Slack</a> channels or <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder/issues">GitHub Issues</a>.</p>

<p>Feel free to try out Coder v2&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">OSS</a> or contact sales <a href="https://coder.com/demo">for a demo</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/contact">a v2 Enterprise trial license</a>.</p>


Coder v2 - Lessons learned from v1, and OSS to Enterprise Editions

<p>When GitHub <a href="https://github.blog/changelog/2022-11-09-codespaces-for-free-and-pro-accounts/">announced that Codespaces is free for individuals</a>, it felt like Christmas. I had applied 3+ times to the beta program using my Gmail account and was never accepted.</p>

<p>Here are my initial thoughts:</p>

<ul>
<li>I was in a web VS Code in seconds, pretty fun</li>
<li>Pretty obvious a Git provider wrote this solution - it&#39;s all about the repository i.e., 1 codespace, 1 repo - there&#39;s probably nothing stopping you from cloning more repos, but again, it&#39;s all about the repo</li>
<li>Surprisingly lots of clicks, a proprietary extension, and pop-ups to get to a local VS Code connected to Codespaces</li>
<li>Creating a branch took like 20+ seconds to complete</li>
<li>Limited compute options - maybe I want additional storage but do not need more compute. You are forced to choose the larger, more expensive configuration.</li>
</ul>


<p>However, I didn&#39;t write this blog post to talk about the user experience of GitHub Codespaces. Rather I want to share what I see in Coder&#39;s enterprise customers and their requirements for remote development.</p>

<p>Coder has enterprise customers using GitHub, usually GitHub Enterprise &quot;GHE&quot;, their self-hosted product, GitHub Enterprise Cloud &quot;GEC,&quot; a single-tenant cloud offering, or GitHub Pro and Team. Codespaces works today with Pro and Team but is not currently an option for GEC and GHE customers.</p>

<p>If enterprise customers use self-hosted GitHub, and need a remote development platform, Coder continues to be the first call to explore and investigate remote development since Codespaces is not an option.</p>

<h2>Multiple Git Providers and Migrations</h2>

<p>While GitHub is the provider of choice for individuals, we see a different story in the enterprise. We often see GitLab in many enterprise accounts, particularly in industries like financial services, insurance, and the public sector. Bitbucket is common in our large enterprise customers too. We see many enterprises in the process of migrating between git providers. With a remote development platform tied to a specific git provider, you lose the flexibility of offering the same remote development experience across providers. Let&#39;s also not forget Azure DevOps and Coder has many customers who use ADO for source control.</p>


<p>The takeaway is Coder&#39;s enterprise customers use many Git providers, sometimes multiple providers in the same enterprise. Since Coder integrates with all of them, we are a popular selection.</p>

<h2>Cloud Migration</h2>

<p>Without exception, all of our enterprise customers are in the process of migrating workloads to one or more public cloud providers. This means some developers are on the new public clouds, while others are restricted to on-premises networks. We often notice this where Coder&#39;s Kubernetes-based control plane is on AWS, Azure, or Google Cloud for some developers, and deployed again within IBM Red Hat OpenShift, SUSE Rancher, or Broadcom VMware Tanzu for other developers.</p>

<p>Again, the takeaway is that Coder can be deployed on (and across) any public cloud or on-premises, so one remote development platform for all developers in an enterprise.</p>


<h2>The IDE</h2>

<p>Although Coder does not build an IDE, many enterprises choose Coder due to the extensive IDE support. Yes, Coder maintains a web-based fork of VS Code called code-server with over 57k GitHub stars. However, we find teams use a mix of IDEs, some are still native thick clients and others web-based. Coder can support all of these IDEs, often both local with SSH and web, or even VNC and RDP. GitHub Codespaces is owned by Microsoft so there is an obvious synergy to promote Microsoft VS Code in Codespaces. Recently, GitHub announced support for JetBrains, which is nice to see, but at the end of the day, GitHub and Microsoft are VS Code-centric organizations. </p>

<p>Coder is also selected because of our JetBrains local and web IDE support. The big news in 2022 is JetBrains announced that <a href="https://lp.jetbrains.com/projector/">they are sunsetting their web IDE (aka Projector)</a> and encouraging usage of  Gateway either with the Gateway client or through specific locally-installed JetBrains IDEs.</p>


<p>The final takeaway is that Coder is IDE-agnostic. For our enterprise customers, supporting the widest mix of IDEs means meeting all of their developer requirements.</p>

<p>Feel free to try out Coder v2&#39;s <a href="https://github.com/coder/coder">OSS</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/demo">contact sales for a demo</a> or a <a href="https://coder.com/contact">v2 Enterprise trial</a> license.</p>


GitHub Codespaces, Coder, and Enterprise Customers

<p><em>The original article was written by Mark Milligan. We’ve updated it to cover the latest improvements in <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-marketplace">code-marketplace</a>.</em></p>

<p>The VS Code IDE was built with extensibility in mind, including adding extensions (plug-ins). Extensions let you easily add languages, debuggers, linters, and other tools to your VS Code installation to support and enhance your developer workflow.</p>

<p>Individual developers and software providers like Microsoft can build VS Code extensions and upload them to an Internet-hosted marketplace like <a href="https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/vscode">Microsoft</a> or <a href="https://open-vsx.org/">Open VSX</a> where developers can easily search and download them in their IDE.</p>

<p>Coder has enterprise customers in regulated and security-conscious industries like banking, asset management, military, and intelligence where they deploy Coder in an air-gapped network. Accessing an internet-hosted marketplace is not allowed.</p>

<p>Enterprises handle this by downloading the extensions from the internet and bringing them into their secure network. One option is to bake extensions into container images that are the basis of Coder remote development environments. Another option is to put the extensions in a shared volume or <a href="https://jfrog.com/artifactory/">Artifactory</a> repository where developers can manually download and import extension .vsix files into their VS Code.</p>

<p>However, for the best developer experience, enterprises can host an air-gapped extension marketplace in their secure network using <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-marketplace">code-marketplace</a>, an open-source project Coder maintains.</p>

<p>The marketplace reads VS Code extensions from file storage or Artifactory and provides an API for IDEs such as <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-server">code-server</a> (”VS Code in the web browser”) to search and download the extensions.</p>


<p>code-marketplace is a small, portable Go application. It can run as a standalone binary, system service on a VM, or on Kubernetes via a Helm chart.</p>


<p>If deploying into a VM, download the <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-marketplace/releases">code-marketplace binary</a> with <code>wget</code>:</p>


<p>The VS Code extensions can reside in a local directory or within jFrog Artifactory as a file store. Adding extensions is as simple as using the binary’s add command from a local <code>.vsix</code> file, a directory of .vsix files, or directly from a marketplace like Open VSX.</p>


<p>Details about integrating code-marketplace into a Coder workspace are in the <a href="https://coder.com/docs">Coder documentation</a>. For a working example, see this <a href="https://github.com/sharkymark/v2-templates/tree/main/code-marketplace">template</a>.</p>

<p>For more information, see <a href="https://github.com/coder/code-marketplace">code-marketplace on GitHub</a> or chat with the community <a href="https://discord.gg/coder">in our Discord channel</a>.</p>


Running a Private VS Code Extension Marketplace

Running a private VS Code Extension Marketplace

<p>Well-defined and executed security and governance processes are essential for any modern enterprise. However, processes designed for the enterprise as a whole are often overly burdensome for software developers. Required security software may limit engineers’ ability to install tools and libraries needed for their projects or hinder productivity by slowing their workstations to a crawl. Engineers required to use VDI solutions for their development environments often complain about unacceptable keyboard lag. Some organizations simply make exceptions for their engineers, which compromises security for the entire organization.</p>

<p>Coder&#39;s software development platform provides a solution, enabling the application of strict security processes without negatively impacting developer productivity.</p>

<p>In this post, we will explore Coder&#39;s security-related features and benefits that have made it a popular solution for enterprises in some of the most highly regulated industries in the world. </p>

<h2>What Coder does</h2>

<p>Coder is a self-hosted developer workspace platform that moves dev environments off of local machines or other solutions and into the enterprise’s on-premises or public cloud Kubernetes infrastructure. </p>

<p>Coder’s developer workspaces are Linux containers inside a dedicated Kubernetes pod where their IDEs, languages, frameworks, and dependencies reside. Each pod also has a dedicated Persistent Volume Claim (PVC), a virtual equivalent of the developer’s laptop hard drive, where the developer clones code repositories. As their name says, PVCs are persistent, so even if a pod and container shut down due to inactivity or an administrative rebuild, the checked-out source code and sensitive data safely remain in the PVC.  When the workspace is rebuilt, the PVC will re-mount to the pod.</p>

<h2>Moving Source code and data to your cloud infrastructure</h2>

<p>The traditional model of software development where engineers write and test code on their personal workstations creates substantial risk for enterprise security and governance. In this model, when onboarding to a new project, the developer clones the project’s code repository from the company’s  Git provider. A complete copy of the enterprise’s intellectual property in the form of source code now resides on the developer’s local computer, typically a laptop, and the developer begins modifying the code as necessary. </p>

<p>Once the code is on a developer’s laptop, however, there are multiple ways for it to be exfiltrated beyond the organization’s control including automated backups to a public cloud provider, being copied to a thumb drive, or the laptop could be stolen or even accidentally left in a rideshare. Whatever the threat vector, there is a potential monetary, brand, and competitive risk of the enterprise’s intellectual property ending up in the wrong hands.</p>

<p>With Coder, however, because the developer workspaces reside within the enterprise’s on-premises or public cloud Kubernetes infrastructure the cloned code repositories never reside on a developer’s laptop. The source code lifecycle remains the same as if the developer were using a local version and a laptop—they add, commit, and push their repository changes to the same enterprise’s Git provider, e.g., GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket, or Azure DevOps, but the source code never leaves the enterprise’s control. Whether an employee or a contractor, when a developer leaves an enterprise, their authentication access is revoked to Coder, eliminating any risk of intellectual property theft.</p>

<h2>Development environment insolation</h2>

<p>Coder also protects against inappropriate access from within the organization by ensuring each workspace is isolated.</p>

<p>Coder leverages a built-in design in Kubernetes called a pod to encapsulate a developer’s workspace as a Linux container. A developer can have one-to-many workspaces in Coder and each workspace consists of a separate pod, inner container, and PVC. Only the developer who creates the workspace can physically access it and its PVC with an IDE.</p>

<p>Enterprises with pair programming requirements can leverage IDE vendor solutions like JetBrains’ Code with Me, VS Code’s LiveShare or collaboration tools like Zoom, Microsoft Teams, WebEx, and Google Meet for pair programming.</p>

<h2>Vulnerability prevention with centralized image management</h2>

<p>Coder workspaces are built from Docker images containing the IDEs, programming languages, frameworks, and related dependencies required for a developer to work on a project. An organization controls who is authorized to create these images and publish them to the  enterprise’s container registry e.g., jFrog Artifactory, AWS ECR, Azure ACR, GCP Container Registry, Red Hat Quay, or Docker Hub.</p>

<p>By centralizing image management, an enterprise ensures consistency across all developer workspaces and effectively prevents developers from using older versions of dependencies with known vulnerabilities that can be exploited.</p>

<p>For example, in the recent Log4j vulnerability that impacted many Java applications, several customers reported using Coder to quickly and easily update the centralized developer images that contained IDEs that addressed the vulnerability. They were then able to automate rebuilds of developers’ workspaces, ensuring that no one was using a vulnerable environment.</p>

<h2>Workspace definition governance (Workspaces as code)</h2>

<p>While development environment workspaces are based on centrally defined and managed Docker images, there are additional controls and configurations that an enterprise would like to control, such as default CPU, GPU, memory, and storage.</p>

<p>Using either the image-level definitions or source-controlled Coder templates, administrators and organization managers can configure additional developer capabilities such as installing VS Code extensions, automatically cloning source code repositories and datasets, building the project including downloading dependencies, defining sharable dev URLs for developers and teammates to review a project’s running applications, and auto-starting applications as daemons.</p>

<p>Centralizing these configurations drives consistency but also increases developer productivity since when a workspace is built, a developer can begin to code and instantly add value.</p>

<h2>Segmenting users with organizations</h2>

<p>Coder administrators organize developers into groups called organizations that restrict which images their members may use to build workspaces. In addition to simplifying image management, this also helps prevent individual developers from gaining access to tools and resources to which they should not have access. </p>

<p>Learn more about <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/organizations">organizations in Coder</a></p>

<h2>Segmenting users with workspace providers</h2>

<p>A key concept of Kubernetes management is namespaces, which partition a single Kubernetes cluster into multiple virtual clusters and prevent namespaced applications and pods from communicating across namespaces.  </p>

<p>For small teams of developers, a single namespace in a Kubernetes cluster can house both the developer workspace pods and the Coder control plane—the central authority that provides authentication and supports the Coder dashboard and API.</p>

<p>However, Coder can also use namespaces to create groups of workspaces that are isolated from each other.  Coder calls this additional layer of isolation a <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/workspace-providers">workspace provider</a>. A workspace provider can even reside on a completely separate Kubernetes cluster than the Coder control plane. These workspace providers can be located in different availability zones or data centers.</p>

<p>Some customers use workspace providers to provide an additional layer of security above and beyond Coder organizations. These customers place developers working on particularly sensitive projects into a workspace provider running on a separate cluster than their less sensitive projects. </p>

<p>Other customers use workspace providers to assist with compliance with GDPR laws that regulate the storage of personal data. </p>

<p>Learn more about <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/workspace-providers">workspace providers</a>.</p>

<h2>Audit logging</h2>

<p>Key to any enterprise’s security and governance is knowing who is doing what with their resources. Coder stores metadata on the logical objects of Coder (e.g. images, organizations, users, workspaces) in a relational database (PostgreSQL) and generates an audit log of how users interact with these objects.</p>

<p>The audit logs are accessible in the browser-based dashboard, exportable as a CSV file, and are automatically included in the underlying Kubernetes logs for review by an enterprise’s external tools like a SIEM.</p>

<p>When combined with a Git repository’s commit history, Coder’s audit logs provide a full record of activities involving the organization&#39;s source code and development environments. </p>

<p>Learn more about <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/audit">audit logging</a> in Coder.</p>

<h2>Workspace process logging</h2>

<p>One of Coder’s high-value and unique features is an administratively-managed setting to log processes started by developers inside a workspace. The workspace process logging feature allows an organization to log all system-level processes executing in the workspace. It attaches a sidecar to the workspace that will log all processes users start in the workspace (e.g., commands executed in the terminal or system processes created by background services in CVM workspaces). </p>

<p>Tech risk and information security teams can review these logs for usage patterns and behavior either by viewing the output from the sidecar or sending it to a monitoring stack, such as CloudWatch, for further analysis. This capability is tamper-proof by a developer and centrally controlled.</p>

<p>Learn more about <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/admin/workspace-management/process-logging">workspace process logging</a></p>

<h2>User management and SSO</h2>

<p>Although Coder comes with a built-in authentication system that is good for evaluations and small deployments, Coder leverages an open standard called OpenID Connect (OIDC) to integrate Coder with an enterprise’s Single Sign-On (SSO) system. Administrators can define whitelists within their SSO to prevent any user in an enterprise’s SSO system from automatically logging into Coder and consuming compute resources.</p>

<h2>Authentication session tokens</h2>

<p>When a user authenticates to a Coder deployment with their built-in or SSO password, Coder creates an authentication session token used by all future API calls for interacting with the browser-based dashboard, API, and Command Line Interface (CLI).</p>

<p>An authentication session token is required the first time a developer or administrator uses the CLI, and the session token is generated by redirecting the user to the browser-based dashboard to copy and paste the session token to proceed with using the CLI. The CLI also provides commands to create, list, regenerate and remove session tokens assigned to the user.</p>

<p>When using the Coder published API, such as for automating the creation of users and workspaces, users pass a valid session token as a cookie in the header section of a curl command.</p>

<h2>Role-based Access Controls</h2>

<p>Coder maintains Role-based Access Controls (RBAC) at the site-wide user level and the organization level. </p>

<p>At the site level, Coder provides four roles:
* Site admin —  grants full access to the system. There can only be one site admin per Coder installation. 
* Site manager — allows access to all administrative functionality in addition to basic usage rights.
* Auditor — offers auditing functionality 
* Members — allows basic usage of Coder like creating workspaces and using IDEs, typically assigned to developers and data scientists.</p>

<p>At the organization level, there are two roles available:
* Organization Manager — grants full administrative access to the organization and the ability to manage its images and members. Can view, modify, and delete workspaces belonging to members of the organization.
* Organization member — grants basic organization access. Can use and view images belonging to the organization. Can create new images assigned to the organization. Can only access workspaces within their organization.</p>

<h2>Securely sharing developer work in progress</h2>

<p>When developers code on laptops, they often test their application on localhost. However, sharing an application running on localhost with a colleague for testing or feedback can be cumbersome, and is sometimes forbidden by an organization&#39;s security policies. </p>

<p>Because Coder is remotely installed and managed, developers can create a dev URL, a unique URL that uses Coder’s session token authentication to securely share a running application with colleagues.</p>

<p>Dev URLs leverage the existing authentication session token and TLS of the Coder deployment and dev URLs are stored securely in the PostgreSQL database along with other Coder deployment metadata.</p>

<p>A common use case for dev URLs is adding the link to a pull request, thereby allowing colleagues to review and test the feature change without having to manually create a development environment and run the application.</p>

<p>Learn more about <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/workspaces/devurls">dev URLs in Coder</a>.</p>

<h2>Secure Shell (SSH)</h2>

<p>The Secure Shell Protocol (SSH) is a cryptographic network protocol for operating network services securely over an unsecured network. SSH is often used as a secure method of cloning, pushing, and pulling code repositories.</p>

<p>Each Coder user is generated with an SSH public and private key. Developers can manually add their public SSH key to the enterprise’s Git provider to permit access. Alternatively, an administrator can create an OAuth application in the Git provider and add its credentials to a Coder deployment. Developers then link their Git provider to their Coder deployment with a one-time click of a button, eliminating the need to manually copy the public SSH key to the Git provider. Developers can then open a web terminal or use an integrated terminal in their favorite IDE and perform secure Git operations.</p>

<p>Another powerful use of SSH in Coder is running a terminal or IDE on your local computer or laptop and then securely connecting to a Coder workspace. Using the Coder CLI, a developer would run a config-ssh command that copies her private SSH key and the workspace hostnames into her local .ssh folder.</p>

<p>The developer can then run an ssh command to connect to a Coder workspace, or alternatively use a local VS Code or JetBrains IDE to connect,  and begin coding with all the benefits of a local IDE experience and a secure session.</p>

<p>It is important to note that while using this method all of the source code remains contained within the Coder workspace and is never cloned to the developer’s laptop. </p>

<p>Many organizations do not allow opening port 22 due to security concerns, but the fucntionality just described does not require it. Coder actually tunnels SSH using the Coder CLI through HTTPS, and Coder leverages the authentication session token to prove the identity of the user. No exposure of port 22 is necessary. </p>

<h2>Encryption in transit</h2>

<p>Coder can be configured as part of the Kubernetes helm installation process to use TLS (Transport Security Layer) to encrypt all HTTP traffic between a local computer and a Coder deployment. Enterprises can configure their own Load Balancer and terminate TLS there, but Coder also uses WebRTC and UDP inside of HTTP which is encrypted by default. By using WebRTC, Coder provides end-to-end encryption from the browser and inside the Coder control and data planes.</p>

<h2>Secret management</h2>

<p>Coder leverages Kubernetes’ secret management to define, store, and retrieve secrets such as service account tokens and certificates that may be needed in a Coder deployment. Coder can also integrate with an enterprise’s secret system like HashiCorp’s Vault for other secrets such as mutual TLS with container registries.</p>

<h2>Virtual Desktop Infrastructure enhancement</h2>

<p>Many enterprises in regulated industries such as banking and public sector mandate that employees access corporate systems through a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) platform like VMware, Citrix, Azure Virtual Desktop, or AWS WorkSpaces. In some cases, VDI may be implemented to support multi-factor authentication and prevent exfiltration via copy and paste. Some of Coder’s customers have developers access Coder from a browser they open within their VDI infrastructure. Because Coder is a browser-based platform from the ground up, the developer experience is fast and snappy within VDI.</p>

<p>In some cases, Coder may be used as <a href="https://coder.com/blog/coder-better-vdi-alternative-for-developers">an alternative to VDI for developers</a>, meeting the security needs of the organization that drove its VDI adoption while providing developers with a better experience than VDI.</p>

<h2>Key takeaways</h2>

<p>Coder helps enterprises bring software ideas and projects to production more quickly. Coder also provides the first line of defense for enterprises to secure and protect their source code, sensitive data, and intellectual property from bad actor theft.</p>

<p>Enterprises that have long wanted to better govern and control software development now have a self-hosted platform that fits into their Kubernetes infrastructure to secure the developer experience while not impeding developer productivity.</p>

<p>To see how Coder can benefit your organization’s software production teams, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">sign up for a customized demostration</a> or contact our sales team directly with your questions at <a href="mailto:contact@coder.com">contact@coder.com</a>.</p>


An overview of Coder's security-related features and benefits that make it a popular solution for enterprises in some of the most highly regulated industries. 

Enterprise security and governance for software development environments: A Coder guide

Ben Potter

VP of Product

<p>Ona (formerly known as Gitpod) and Coder both provide developers with reproducible, powerful, cloud-based developer environments or workspaces, but they differ dramatically in their target audience: While Ona appears to be focused on individuals or small teams by way of a SaaS offering only, Coder is focused on making cloud development available to the enterprise, with a self-hosted on-premises and public cloud solution. </p>

<p>Here&#39;s how to choose the best fit for your development team.</p>

<h2>Why remote development</h2>

<p>Today most developers have their IDEs on their local machines. There is a growing interest in moving development workspaces and IDEs to the cloud, which solves some key problems for organizations while also offering advantages for the developer:</p>

<ul>
<li><p><strong>start coding on day one</strong> — developers often spend hours or days setting up a development environment on a local machine before they can make their first commit. With cloud-based workspaces, fully configured workspaces are available for developers to <a href="https://coder.com/blog/new-developers-make-their-first-commit-on-day-1-thanks-to-coder">start contributing immediately</a>.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>secure source code</strong> — individual devices remain the <a href="https://resources.coder.com/ai-maturity-model/AI_Maturity_Self_Assessment">least secure endpoint in the software development pipeline</a>. With local development, source code and data are cloned to individual workstations, creating security risks. With cloud-based workspaces, source code and data remain within the organization’s infrastructure.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>less drift</strong> — dependency and <a href="https://coder.com/blog/what-is-configuration-drift">configuration drift in the development environment results in broken environments and builds</a>, i.e., the classic “it works on my machine” problem. Reproducible, cloud-based developer workspaces ensure that everyone is working with the same basic configuration. </p></li>
<li><p><strong>greater compute power</strong> — cloud development eliminates the need to focus on local hardware. Need more processing power? <a href="https://coder.com/cde/premium">Add more cores to your instance</a>—or a GPU.</p></li>
<li><p><strong>remote access</strong> — because development environments are in the cloud, developers can <a href="https://resources.coder.com/whitepaper-the-cube/governing-ai-workflows-thecube-research">access them securely from wherever they are</a>.</p></li>
</ul>

<h2>Ona: Easy to get started, but only hosted SaaS</h2>

<p>Ona is very focused on the developer experience. Getting started with Ona is easy. Like Coder, they developed (and open-sourced) a fork of VS Code suited for the web browser. Using a familiar IDE makes it simpler for developers to transition to remote development, since they do not need to learn new shortcuts, extensions, etc. Ona also supports different IDEs beyond VS Code in the web browser. Developers can choose between VS Code (Web), VS Code (Local), and beta support for IntelliJ IDEs to write code. </p>

<p>Ona’s <a href="https://ona.com/docs/ona/getting-started">opinionated model</a> for development environments can work well for new projects and small teams building web applications. All workspaces are ephemeral, run in containers, and new workspaces can be created for each task (feature, bugfix, code review) a developer does.</p>

<p>There is a growing list of hosted SaaS offerings from larger, more established suppliers like <a href="https://github.com/features/codespaces">GitHub Codespaces</a>, <a href="https://aws.amazon.com/codecatalyst/">Amazon CodeCatalyst</a>, <a href="https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/dev-box/#features">Microsoft Dev Box</a>, and soon <a href="https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/editor/remote_development/">GitLab</a>. </p>

<h2>Coder: Supporting enterprises, on their infrastructure</h2>

<p>While Ona has a <a href="https://ona.com/docs/ona/configuration/overview">single-tenant SaaS offering</a> option, it has discontinued support for a self-hosted offering like Coder. Coder continues to only be a self-hosted offering because our target customers, larger enterprises, prefer this flexibility and security to run Coder on-premises or in their public cloud.</p>

<p>One example is multi-cluster and workspace infrastructure support. With Coder, workspaces can be provisioned on whatever Kubernetes, Docker or VM infrastructure you prefer, so developers can develop remotely with low-latency wherever they are on the globe. This is particularly useful for organizations that may have teams of developers that are geographically distributed. Coder supports other enterprise-grade features such as built-in single-sign-on, an audit log, configurable workspace resources, quotas, and usage metrics.</p>

<p>Coder supports different types of workspace infrastructure. While Coder can run on Kubernetes, it is not required. Coder also runs on Docker and VMs. The Coder control plane can also run on a laptop, a VM or Kubernetes.</p>

<p>Enterprises can confidently deploy Coder at scale in their organization, measure its adoption, and configure their deployment to match requirements for different teams. </p>

<p>With that being said, the developer experience with Coder is not an afterthought. Coder supports multiple IDEs, full Linux desktop, container and VM development (including Windows and Visual Studio or macOS), GPU support, REST access, CLI  access, and personalization to enable developers and teams to move their existing workflows to remote workspaces.</p>


<table>
  <tr>
   <td>
   </td>
   <th style="text-align: left;">Coder
   </th>
   <th style="text-align: left;">Ona
   </th>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Try in seconds (laptop)
   </td>
   <td>
         ✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Try in seconds (cloud SaaS)
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>      
   <td>SaaS version
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Self-host (Docker)
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Self-host (Kubernetes)
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Self-host (Multi-region)
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Organizations/teams
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>SSO Support
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Usage metrics
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Audit log
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Configurable workspace resources and limits
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket integration
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Use VS Code IDEs
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Use JetBrains IDEs
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Custom apps and IDEs
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Docker in workspaces
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>GPUs in workspaces
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Configure workspace images and templates
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Workspace pre-builds
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Workspace snapshots
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>CLI 
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>REST API
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
   <td>
   </td>
  </tr>
  <tr>
   <td>Collaboration
   </td>
   <td>via third-party <br />IDE extensions
   </td>
   <td>✅
   </td>
  </tr>
</table>

<center><small>This table was last updated on 12/19/2022. Please [contact us](https://coder.com/contact) if you find inaccuracies or missing information.</small></center>


<h2>Next steps</h2>

<p>Ona can be right for some environments, but if you&#39;re looking to securely scale AI agents for your developers then a self-hosted alternative like Coder is exactly what you need.</p>

<p>Learn more by reading <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder-oss">our documentation</a> or <a href="https://coder.com/trial">sign up for a trial.</a> You can also <a href="https://coder.com/demo">request a demo</a> of Coder or <a href="https://coder.com/contact">request to speak with Sales</a> about licensing and pricing.</p>


Ona and Coder both provide developers with reproducible, powerful, cloud-based developer environments or workspaces. See the differences.

Coder vs. Ona: Which is better for your team?

<p>Headquartered in Houston, Texas, the heart of the world’s oil and gas industry, <a href="https://nov.com">NOV</a> (formerly National Oilwell Varco) is a Fortune 500 independent provider of oilfield equipment and technologies. Originally founded in 1862, NOV and its predecessor companies have spent 159 years helping transform oil and gas field development and improving its cost-effectiveness, efficiency, safety, and environmental impact.</p>

<p>Joshua Cluff is the Data Science Operations Manager at NOV. As such, he is responsible for defining and leading the adoption of best practices in model lifecycle (development, deployment, maintenance) across the data science organization of the entire company.</p>

<h2>The problem: Existing platform failed to meet the growing needs of data science teams</h2>

<p>With continual growth and development in data science, NOV knew that the traditional method of developing on local workstations was not sustainable and that moving development to the cloud was essential. </p>

<p>As an AWS customer, the team made a strong effort to utilize existing AWS services, specifically Cloud9—their cloud-based integrated development environment (IDE). </p>

<p>However, NOV’s various data science teams quickly pushed the boundaries of what Cloud9 could provide. As they transitioned from on-premises to cloud development, the team quickly grew increasingly frustrated with not being able to use PyCharm, RStudio, and VS Code. </p>

<p>They needed an adaptive solution that would meet the requirements and preferences of various data science teams. It was Joshua Cluff’s responsibility to find that solution.</p>

<h2>Challenge: Must support multiple IDEs</h2>

<p>The evolution of IDE adoption at NOV has followed a pattern often seen across the industry. The organization began with a large amount of legacy code in R. A collective decision was made to move new projects to Python. As a result, data scientists began to prefer working in JetBrains PyCharm and VS Code, neither of which is supported by Cloud9. The NOV data scientists also found the debugging tools available in Cloud9 to be lacking compared to those offered in PyCharm and VS Code. </p>

<p>Any solution would require support for legacy IDEs like RStudio as well as newer IDEs like VS Code and PyCharm with their robust debugging features.</p>

<h2>Challenge: Must satisfy the security group’s requirements</h2>

<p>A new solution would also have to be approved by NOV’s information security group. When scientists developed on local machines, the security group required they use VPN when connecting to resources within the firewall, resulting in a poor experience for the scientists as well as creating additional work for the sysadmins responsible for the VPN. </p>

<p>NOV sysadmins saw clear advantages to browser-based remote development platforms that required fewer VPN configurations, which would also mean fewer support tickets to wade through. </p>

<h2>The solution: Coder</h2>

<p>When Joshua Cluff discovered Coder, he knew that it had the potential to meet all of NOV’s varied needs.</p>

<p>First, because <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/setup/kubernetes">Coder is cloud provider agnostic</a>, it could <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/setup/kubernetes/aws">run on AWS’s Elastic Kubernetes Service</a> (EKS). </p>

<p>Second, <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/workspaces/editors">Coder supports multiple editors and IDEs</a>, including RStudio, VS Code, and PyCharm (as well as other JetBrains IDEs). So whether working on legacy code or newer code in Python, NOV’s data scientists can use the tools they need.</p>

<p>Finally, Coder lets NOV’s data scientists connect to their workspaces with <a href="https://coder.com/docs/coder/latest/guides/tls-certificates">an encrypted TLS browser session</a>, and each workspace resides securely in an isolated AWS cloud Kubernetes pod.</p>

<p>“Coder opens the door for data scientists to use the IDEs they prefer like RStudio, PyCharm, and VS Code,” says Joshua Cluff. “It simplifies environment management, removes the need for multiple VPNs, increases the security of data usage by restricting data to the cloud, and all without increasing the load on sysadmins.”</p>

<h2>Learn about other use cases and see a demonstration of Coder</h2>

<p>If you would like to see a live demonstration of Coder for your data science, front-end, and back-end software development needs, <a href="https://coder.com/demo">schedule a demo</a>. You can also <a href="https://coder.com/trial">evaluate Coder with a free trial</a> running on Docker or Kubernetes.</p>


NOV needed a cloud-based solution for AWS that would let their data scientists use a variety of IDEs with robust debugging and avoid the complications of VPN.

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