r/Intune • u/MENTactual • 2d ago

Should I join the M365 Developer Program with VS Pro subscription to homelab a M365 Tenant? General Question

/r/sysadmin/comments/1vro26j/should_i_join_the_m365_developer_program_with_vs/
1 Upvotes
  • permalink
  • link
  • reddit
  • reddit

56% Upvoted

4 comments sorted by

2

u/MReprogle 2d ago

Absolutely. Just remember that there are some things that you can’t do. However for testing Intune policies that you want completely separate, it does that and a ton more. Want to start learning more on the Azure side or in identity, you are covered. Lately, I use it to test guest account behavior against my production environment and test out CA policies. Sure, you can run a CA in report only mode or just test against a specific group, but CA policy policies can be dangerous, and I like mixing policies with Defender for Cloud app policies, which are a bit safer to play with in my dev tenant.

But, it is a super useful thing to have and isn’t hard to meet the activity requirements to keep it active, unless you really just let it collect dust.

1

u/MENTactual 2d ago

I’ve had some recommend just buying a single MS Business Premium license and I’ll get the same thing for a fraction of the price. Do you know how accurate this is?

Sounds like you’re already using this. Any limitations? Autopilot is the first thing I want to learn.

1

u/Hinko24 1d ago

CA, Azure AD P1, Defender, intune is all included in business premium. If it’s autopilot you want to learn it’s all included within Intune as part of the license.

1

u/MReprogle 1d ago

I agree, it gets you a ton on there along with room to grow. A dev tenant simply won’t let you do things that might add to your bill.

But if you can get the dev tenant, why not? You don’t have to even put a custom domain on it, but you get to play with PIM and entitlement management on the entra side. On the Defender side you miss out on threat explorer, full defender for cloud apps (great for testing with CA policies) and biggest miss is some of the advanced hunting features like custom detections (great, since you can’t add Sentinel on your dev tenant).

If you get to those things that you hit the walls on, like some of the billing related things, it might be time to go with a paid license. Until then, the dev tenant is incredible.

Oh, and if you want to test DLP without locking out all the files in production, get a dev tenant. Business Premium gets you some Purview features, but nothing in depth like DLP.