Open SSH Connection in VS Code to Azure Ubuntu VM to Perform Remote Development

VS Code is a useful development tool which can be used on any platform to develop code in any language of your preference. In an Azure Ubuntu VM without setting up the desktop remote access, you may want to perform development work and may want to perform debugging activities, as you are doing with local files in a Linux environment. You can use ssh extension for VS Code and create ssh connection to a VM in Azure or anywhere over ssh and work connected to the remote Linux, MacOS or Windows machines via VS Code. Let’s look at steps to connect to a Ubuntu VM on Azure using a VS Code in Windows 10 local machine.

Create New Linux Admin User in Azure Ubuntu VM

We can setup Linux VMs in Azure for various reasons. Maybe it is for setting up a Jenkins or Ansible server. If we are setting up Ansible on a Linux VM in Azure it is recommended to use a separate user with Admin permissions, instead of the default user who has the root access as well. This is beneficial as in case we need to reset access for the default user, we can do so without harming anything setup for Ansible. In this post let us look at steps to add an additional admin user to Ubuntu Linux VM in Azure and how we can enable ssh to the VM with that user.