How to configure Self Hosted Agent for Azure Pipelines

What is an Agent ?

\=> An agent is computing infrastructure with installed agent software that runs one job at a time.

There are primarily two types of build agents in Azure Pipelines:-

1. Microsoft-hosted agents:- This is a service totally managed by Microsoft and are available for use in Azure Pipelines at no extra cost.

2. Self-hosted agents:- This is a service that you set up and manage on your own infrastructure, such as your on-premises servers or virtual machines in the cloud. In a self-hosted agent, you can install all the software you need for your builds, and this is persisted on every pipeline execution. A self-hosted agent can be on Windows, Linux, macOS, or in a Docker container.

Pre-requisites:-

• Microsoft account setup

• Azure account and subscription setup

• Create a VM(Ubuntu 22.04) in Azure Cloud

• Create Personal Access Token in Azure DevOps

How to configure Self-hosted build agent?

1. Go to Azure DevOps dashboard - https://dev.azure.com/

2. Select your project dashboard

3. Go to your project settings

4. Click on Agent pools

• 5. Create a new Agent pool name :-

  Enter any name in my case, I have given "sami-hosted"

  Make sure you select Grant access permission to all pipelines

  

• 6. click on sami-hosted Agents, New agent

  

  7. Click on Linux

     

     Note down the steps to configure Linux build agent.
     Login to your Azure VM now.

     

     Step #1 - Create the Agent

     mkdir myagent && cd myagent

     Step #2 - Download the agent

     wget https://vstsagentpackage.azureedge.net/agent/2.214.1/vsts-agent-linux-x64-2.214.1.tar.gz

Step #3 - Configure the Agent

tar zxvf vsts-agent-linux-x64-2.214.1.tar.gz

List the files in the directory after extracting.

ls -alh

Step #4:

Run the below command:

./config.sh

Accept the Team Explorer Everywhere license agreement now?

Type Y and enter

Step #5:

Enter server URL >
https://dev.azure.com/your-site-name

Enter authentication type (press enter for PAT) > PAT

Enter personal access token

Enter Agent pool

Give some name

Enter work folder > enter

Configure the Agent to run as a Service

sudo ./svc.sh install

Execute now to run as a service

./runsvc.sh

This confirms that Build agent is successfully configured in Azure DevOps and is available to run builds.