The Remote – SSH extension lets you use any remote machine with an SSH server as your development environment. This can greatly simplify development and troubleshooting in a wide variety of circumstances. For example, you can:

• Develop on the same operating system you deploy to or use larger, faster or more specialized hardware than your local machine.
• Quickly swap between different, remote development environments and safely make updates without worrying about impacting your local machine.
• Access an existing development environment from multiple machines or locations.
• Debug an application running somewhere else such as a customer site or in the cloud.

No source code needs to be on your local machine to obtain these benefits since the extension runs commands and other extensions directly on the remote machine. You can open any folder on the remote machine and work with it just as you would if the folder were on your own machine.

SSH Host Requirements

You can connect to a running SSH server on:

• x86_64 Debian 8+, Ubuntu 16.04+, CentOS / RHEL 7+
• ARMv7l (AArch32) Raspbian Stretch/9+ (32-bit)
• Experimental (VS Code Insiders only): ARMv8l (AArch64) Ubuntu 18.04+ (64-bit)

Other glibc based Linux distributions for x86_64, ARMv7l (AArch32), and ARMv8l (AArch64) should work if they have the needed prerequisites. See the Remote Development with Linux article for information prerequisites and tips for getting community-supported distributions up to and running.
While ARMv7l (AArch32) and ARMv8l (AArch64) support are available, some extensions installed on these devices may not work due to the use of x86 native code in the extension.

Prerequisites

To get started, you need to have done the following:

1. Install an OpenSSH compatible SSH client (PuTTY is not supported).
2. Install Visual Studio Code.
3. Have an Azure subscription (If you don’t have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin).

Install the extension

The Remote – SSH extension is used to connect to SSH hosts.

Install the Remote – SSH extension

Remote – SSH

With the Remote – SSH extension installed, you will see a new Status bar item at the far left.

The Remote Status bar item can quickly show you in which context VS Code is running (local or remote) and clicking on the item will bring up the Remote – SSH commands.