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Self-Hosted Agent In Azure Devops

In this article, we will create the self-hosted agent in Azure DevOps. For implementing the self-hosted agent, we will work on the following steps.

Create an agent pool
Create Personal Access Token
Install agent on the machine
Change the agent pool of the pipeline
Change in yaml file
Queue the build

Create An Agent Pool

First, create an agent pool. For that, click on the "Project settings" menu.

Picture showing the Project settings option in the Azure Devops

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Inside the project settings, click on the "Agent Pools" menu.

Picture showing the Agent Pools options inside the Project settings option in the Azure Devops

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In the "Agents pools" screen, click on the "Add pool" button.

Picture showing the Agents pools screen with the list of pools

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A window appears where you can enter the pool information.

Picture showing the window for adding a new agent pool

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Click on the "Create" button to complete the creation of an agent pool.

Create Personal Access Token

To create the personal token, click on the "Personal access tokens" from the profile icon.

Picture showing the Personal access tokens option in the menu

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A screen appears with the list of tokens. Click on the "+ New Token" button.

Picture showing the New Token button for adding the new token

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A window appears to enter the personal token

Picture showing the screen where you can enter the token information and generate the token

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A token will be created.

Picture showing the token generated in Devops

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Install The Agent On The Local Machine

To install the agent, click on the agent pool.

Picture showing the list of agent pools in DevOps

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A screen appears where you can click on the "New agent" button.

Picture showing the New agent button for adding the new agent

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A popup window appears where you can download the agent based on the operating system you have.

As I have a windows operating system on my machine, so I will download an agent that is compatible with the windows operating system.

Picture showing the download button for downloading the agent for self-hosting

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An agent will be downloaded (file name: vsts-agent-win-x64-2.187.2.zip). You can unzip the file.

You can see the following file and folder structure.

Picture showing the extracted files from the agent folder downloaded in the previous step

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To install it, open PowerShell in Admin mode. Go to the path where you have extracted the agent. Write the following command.

# The code will run “config.cmd”.
./config.cmd

Once the above command is executed, following information is required.

Server URL
PAT
Agent pool

Picture showing the powershell window for executing the config.cmd file and configuring the self-hosted agent

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To activate the agent, write the following command.

./run.cmd

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Change The Agent Pool Of The Pipeline

To change the agent pool, go to the pipeline. Click on the pipeline

Picture showing the list of all pipelines in the Azure Devops

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In the detail screen, click on the "Edit" button.

Picture showing the Edit button for editing the pipeline

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Go to ellipsis and then "Triggers".

Picture showing the Triggers inside the selected pipeline

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In the "yaml" tab, change the agent pool and click on the "Save" button.

Picture showing selecting the self-hosted agent in the pipeline

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Change In The Yaml File

Specify the agent pool and agent name in the yaml file. Here is the yaml file.

# ASP.NET Core (.NET Framework)
# Build and test ASP.NET Core projects targeting the full .NET Framework.
# Add steps that publish symbols, save build artifacts, and more:
# https://docs.microsoft.com/azure/devops/pipelines/languages/dotnet-core

trigger:
- master

pool:
  name: myagentpool
  demands:
    - agent.name -equals DESKTOP-85KOUP0

variables:
  solution: '**/*.sln'
  buildPlatform: 'Any CPU'
  buildConfiguration: 'Release'

steps:
- task: NuGetToolInstaller@1

- task: VSTest@2
  inputs:
    platform: '$(buildPlatform)'
    configuration: '$(buildConfiguration)'

Queue The Build

Queue the build and you can see the following output

Picture showing executing the build using self-hosted agent

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You can see the code inside the "_work" folder.

Picture showing the artifacts added in the self-hosted agent

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Posted By -	Karan Gupta

Posted On -	Wednesday, July 7, 2021

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