#96 Agent in Azure DevOps

Must-know vocabulary

Fundamental concepts to grasp prior to delving into agents within Azure DevOps:

• Agent: An agent in Azure DevOps is a software component responsible for executing tasks and jobs within a pipeline. This could include physical servers within your data center, virtual machines hosted on-premises or in the cloud, or even containerized environments. These agents can run on various operating systems and environments, such as Windows, Linux, or macOS. Agents connect to Azure DevOps and receive instructions to perform tasks like building code, running tests, or deploying applications. In GitHub Actions, the equivalent term for an “agent” is a “runner.”
• Agent Virtual Machine: An agent virtual machine specifically refers to a virtualized environment (VM) where the Azure Pipelines agent software is installed and configured. It may be a dedicated VM provisioned specifically for running CI/CD tasks, or it could be an existing VM that you’ve configured to act as an agent for your pipelines. Agent virtual machines can be provisioned and managed using tools like Azure Virtual Machines, AWS EC2 instances, or other cloud infrastructure services. This term agent virtual machine specifically denotes a virtualized environment used as an agent for Azure DevOps pipelines, while the term “agent” encompasses a broader range of machines and environments where the agent software is installed and utilized.
• Agent pool: An agent pool is a group or collection of agents that are available to execute tasks within Azure DevOps pipelines. These agents can be grouped together based on factors like operating system, capabilities, or geographical location. When a pipeline is executed, it can specify which agent pool to use, and Azure DevOps will allocate an available agent from that pool to execute the tasks defined in the pipeline. Agent pools allow for efficient resource utilization and scalability in Azure DevOps pipelines.

Agent type

Azure Pipelines offers two types of agents:

• Microsoft-hosted agents
• Self-hosted agents

Microsoft-hosted agents

• These agents are hosted and managed by Microsoft.
• When you run a pipeline, Microsoft-hosted agents provide a convenient option. They handle maintenance and upgrades for you.
• Each time you execute a pipeline…