In this article, you can learn about the types of Azure DevOps Agents and discover the key benefits of utilizing these powerful tools in your Azure DevOps workflows. Let's start with an overview of Azure DevOps.
What is Azure DevOps?
Azure DevOps is a cloud-based tool provided by Microsoft for automating the deployment process, facilitating developer teams or operations teams in planning, developing, deploying, and managing software. This platform incorporates features that span the entire software development lifecycle, including source code management, continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD), agile planning, work tracking, collaboration, automated testing, and other software development functionalities. The Azure DevOps tool is suitable for teams of all sizes, ranging from small start-ups to large enterprises or organizations.
What is Azure DevOps Agent Pool?
An Azure DevOps Agent Pool is a powerful tool for automating tasks within the Azure DevOps environment. These agent pools consist of system programs that execute jobs on your behalf. The agents within these pools are utilized to perform tasks outlined in pipeline jobs, including building, testing, and deploying code.
You can create different agent pools for various types of jobs and tasks. For example, you could establish a Windows agent pool for running Windows jobs. Similarly, you can create a separate agent pool for executing Linux jobs and another agent pool for macOS jobs.
Here are some of the things you can do with agents in Azure DevOps:
Build and test your code: In Azure DevOps, Agents can be used to build and test your code on a variety of platforms (Windows, Linux or MacOS). These agents can help to ensure that your project code is compatible with different environments.
Deploy your code: Agents can be used to deploy your code to production or to other environments like Dev, Test and QA. Everything can be automated with agents in pipelines which make your deployment process faster, easier and also reduces the risk of errors.
Run Tasks: These Azure DevOps agents can be used to run various tasks like running scripts, performing code analysis, and collecting data.
What are the types of Azure DevOps Agents?
There are two main types of agents available in Azure DevOps: One is Microsoft-hosted agents and the second one is Self-hosted agents. Both these agents are used to run various tasks or jobs to build code or deploy software using Azure DevOps pipelines. Let's see more about each of these agents in detail.
1. Microsoft-Hosted Agents:
Microsoft-hosted agents are virtual machines provisioned and managed by Microsoft itself. They are a good option if you don't have your own customized infrastructure or if you prefer not to manage it yourself; in such cases, this is the best option to choose. These agents don't require maintenance or management, as they are managed by Microsoft. They come by default with up-to-date software patches and are scalable when needed. If you are using free Azure DevOps, you can get one free Microsoft-hosted agent, which can be used to run pipeline jobs.
2. Self-Hosted Agents:
Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set Agents:
There is also one more agent in Azure DevOps - the Azure Virtual Machine Scale Set (VMSS) agent, which is a type of self-hosted agent that is rarely used in projects. This agent can be used to scale the number of agents up or down as needed for Azure DevOps pipelines.
Benefits to using these Agents in Azure DevOps:
Scalability: You can use as many agents as you need to run your jobs with Azure DevOps License. Increasing the count of agents will help to improve the performance of pipelines and also to run parallel jobs at the same time.
Security: Azure DevOps Agents can be used to run jobs in a secure environment which will help to protect your code and data from security breaches.
Flexibility: Agents can be used to run a variety of jobs which can be help to automate a wider range of project tasks and POCs in the development process.
Note: Both Microsoft-Hosted Agents and Self-Hosted Agents provide the same benefits with the purchased license.
FAQs:
Q1: What are the different types of Azure DevOps Agents?
Ans: Microsoft-hosted agents and Self-hosted agents are the two different types of agents in Azure DevOps.
Q2: What are the benefits of using Azure DevOps Agents?
Ans: Scalability, Security and Flexibility.
Q3: What are the benefits of using Microsoft-hosted agents?
Ans: No maintenance or management required, up to date software and Scalable are the main benefits of using Microsoft-hosted agents.
Q4: What are the benefits of using Self-hosted agents?
Ans: More control and can be used for specific hardware or software requirements.
Q5: Can we install multiple agents on a Self-Hosted agent?
Ans: Yes, you can install two or more agents on Self-Hosted agents, but in few cases it might degrade the performance of job executions. It's always suggested to install one agent per machine.