title: Visual Studio and Release Manager
body: <p>I have been playing around with Visual Studio and Microsoft Release Manager. I have found a couple of behaviors I wasn't expecting and I was hoping someone might be able to confirm these (in case I'm getting the wrong end of the stick).</p>
  
  <p>My goal is to:</p>
  
  <ol>
  <li>Host my code in Visual Studio Online.</li>
  <li>Deploy said code to on-premise or Azure hosted VM, using deployment agents.</li>
  </ol>
  
  <p>My first attempt; using the Release Manager service provided as part of Visual Studio Online. However I found that I wasn't able to connect to Release Manager Online with agents deployed on-premise (or in Azure VMs).</p>
  
  <p>I later found this text at <a href="https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/get-started/release/manage-your-release-vs" rel="nofollow">https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/get-started/release/manage-your-release-vs</a></p>
  
  <blockquote>
    <p>You have the following options for managing your releases:</p>
    
    <p>Using Release Management as a service on Visual Studio Online: You
    need a Visual Studio Online account. You cannot use Chef and you can
    deploy only to vNext environments based on Azure IaaS services</p>
    
    <p>Using an on-premises server: You need to install Release Management
    Server; do that here.</p>
  </blockquote>
  
  <p>This seems to suggest that Visual Studio Online Release Manager cannot use agents - is this correct?</p>
  
  <p>Assuming that is correct, my second attempt was installing Release Manager on-premises (so to speak, it is actually in an Azure VM). </p>
  
  <p>I installed the latest RM versions (server, client, agent) from <a href="https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#d-release-management" rel="nofollow">https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/downloads/download-visual-studio-vs#d-release-management</a>. Specifically, Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 with Update 4 (12.0.31101.0).</p>
  
  <p>However I found that I was unable to connect the on-premise Release Manager to Visual Studio Online. The error message stating that I must supply the user name in 'domain\username' format - which won't match the online 'username@domain.com' format.</p>
  
  <p>This seems to suggest that an on-premise installation of Release Manager cannot connect to Visual Studio Online - is this correct?</p>
  
  <p>Thanks,</p>