Is VS 2015 a prerequisite for using Release Management?

Hi,

We're using the latest update for Visual Studio 2015, and TFS.

I'm trying to configure Release Management.

Now it seems for every environment, I need to install a Build Agent on the server, that the release will be deployed on.

It also seems that Visual Studio 2015 being on that machine is a prerequisite for the Build Agent to be deployed.

But that doesn't make sense, no customer would want VS to be installed on their Production server.  
is there a subset of Visual Studio that is the bit necessary for the Build Agent to work, for deployments?

Are there any other workarounds you would recommend?

Thanks

-Sam Amin