I am confused by the difference between deployment group and agent pool.
I understand that Agent poolsarefor building and releasing artifacts in the pipeline.
I assumed Deployment group is for receiving app deployments. They are the target machines of a deployment. Therefore they might have a different agent software.
But this doc says "Every target machine in the deployment group requires an installed build and release agent". Does that mean build and release agent is not just for building & releasing also for accepting deployments?
[MS/Docs/Provisioning Deployment Groups]
Does that mean build and release agent is not just for building & releasing also for accepting deployments?
Yes, you are correct. The agents installed in agent pool and deployment group can be used for building and accepting deployments.
For example, if you only have one server machine you are going to deploy to. You can actually using private agent pool( installing a self-hosted agent on the server machine). You can build and deploy your app using this self-hosted agent in the agent pool. But if you have multiple server machines you need to deploy to. You'd better use deployment groups.
As below is described in the document:
A deployment group is a logical set of deployment target machines that have agents installed on each one. Deployment groups represent the physical environments; for example, "Dev", "Test", "UAT", and "Production". In effect, a deployment group is just another grouping of agents, much like an agent pool.
The main difference of Deployment groups and Agent Pools is where they can be used in the azure pipeline.
Deployment groups can only be used in the Deployment group job in Classic release pipelines. See below screenshot.
Agent pools are available in both the release pipelines and build pipelines, but can only be used in normal agent job(not Deployment group job). See above screenshot.
Related
I need to push a DevOps website from azure to IIS on Amazon or Microsoft (or locally).
When I run the script in the Azure VM, I get the error the domain vstsagentpackage.azureedge.net isn't accessible. I assume this is for advanced internal azure networking reasons.
What is the most appropriate way to publish one DevOps site into one IIS Web(app) site while others are running and perhaps managed by others? I'm currently using this approach.
I'm not sure if you have permission to, but if you do, I'd recommend setting up a deployment group or agent (deployment group for classic pipelines, agent for YAML) on the Windows Server hosting the site.
Once you set up a deployment group/agent, you'll want to configure your release pipeline to be set to use the newly registered agent or deployment group within your pipeline.
If you're using a classic (UI) pipeline, you'll want to add a new Deployment Group Job by clicking the ellipsis to the right of your stage name:
After you've added the deployment group job, you'll want to select the deployment group you've just added:
With that configured, you'll be running your pipeline on the IIS server you're deploying to, and you'll just need to add the IISWebAppDeployemntOnMachineGroup#0 task to your release pipeline and point to the site you're deploying to:
As a beginner of DevOps, I would like to know how to use one VM for azure pipeline runs. When starting the run of the azure pipeline task it always gives a fresh VM from azure.
For caching and file saving purposes, I want to use a reserved VM for pipeline run.
Appreciate your suggestions and support.
Check the pic, In the Azure DevOps, we could run the pipeline via Hosted agent and Self-Host agent.
Azure Pipelines provides a pre-defined agent pool named Azure Pipelines, this is hosted agent and each time you run a pipeline, you get a fresh virtual machine. The virtual machine is discarded after one use.
For caching and file saving purposes, I want to use a reserved VM for pipeline run.
We could refer to this doc to install the self-hosted agent, it will save the cache.
You can setup a 'self hosted agent'. That would be your own VM, which you have total control over. I'm not sure whether this will be any cheaper than hosted agents.
I've used a self-hosted agent a while ago, and saved some money booting the VM only when needed. After a while it would shutdown again.
Source: Self-hosted agents
Does azure pipelines allow custom action like AWS codepipeline?
I want to create a job worker that will poll azure pipeline for job requests for this custom action, execute the job, and return the status result to azure pipeline.
Something similar to - https://docs.aws.amazon.com/codepipeline/latest/userguide/actions-create-custom-action.html
Tasks are the building blocks for defining automation in a build or release pipeline in Azure DevOps. There are many built-in tasks to enable fundamental build and deployment scenarios. If the existing tasks don't satisfy your needs, you can always build a custom task. Check Task types & usage for more details.
In addition, Visual Studio Marketplace offers a number of extensions; each of which, when installed to your subscription or collection, extends the task catalog with one or more tasks. Furthermore, you can write your own custom extensions to add tasks to Azure Pipelines.
Azure Pipeline Agents
When your pipeline runs, the system begins one or more jobs. An agent is computing infrastructure with installed agent software that runs one job at a time.
You have two options here to choose from: Microsoft-hosted agents or Self-hosted agents
An agent that you set up and manage on your own to run jobs is a self-hosted agent. Self-hosted agents give you more control to install dependent software needed for your builds and deployments. Also, machine-level caches and configuration persist from run to run, which can boost speed.
However, before you install a self-hosted agent you might want to see if a Microsoft-hosted agent pool will work for you. In many cases, this is the simplest way to get going.
With Microsoft-hosted agents, maintenance and upgrades are taken care of for you. Each time you run a pipeline, you get a fresh virtual machine. The virtual machine is discarded after one use. Microsoft-hosted agents can run jobs directly on the VM or in a container. Azure Pipelines provides a pre-defined agent pool named Azure Pipelines with Microsoft-hosted agents.
You can try it first and see if it works for your build or deployment. If not, you can use a self-hosted agent. Check this doc for more details.
I will pull the agent queue from my custom job worker and process the job. Is that possible in azure pipelines?
Based on my understanding of code pipeline and Azure devops, I am afraid what you said should be meaningless.
According to the document Create and add a custom action in CodePipeline, we could to know that:
AWS CodePipeline includes a number of actions that help you configure
build, test, and deploy resources for your automated release process.
If your release process includes activities that are not included in
the default actions, such as an internally developed build process or
a test suite, you can create a custom action for that purpose and
include it in your pipeline.
But for Azure devops, we do not need to create a job worker that will poll CodePipeline for job requests for this custom action. That because the whole process of build/release can be customized. We do not need to add a job worker for additional custom actions.
Azure devops provide a lot of templates when we create the pipeline, we could modify the pipeline directly in the pipeline to add/remove or update the task:
Even we can completely start with a blank pipeline and completely customize the entire build/release process.
So, we do not need to create a job worker for the custom action, just modify your pipeline directly.
I have “.Net Core Web Api” and “Angular 8” projects. I am manually deploying these two application on Azure Virtual Machine.
Now I want to use Azure CI/CD pipeline process and deployed above application on IIS present on above Azure Virtual Machine.
Can I achieve above tasks by using Azure Deployment Groups? I am not able to find proper solutions on internet.
Any help will be really appreciated.
I have this link: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/apps/cd/deploy-webdeploy-iis-deploygroups?view=azure-devops but no use.
Can I achieve above tasks by using Azure Deployment Groups?
Of course sure. Azure virtual machine just the VM which hosted by Azure, there's no more difference with the normal VM.
To deploy application to Azure VMs through IIS tasks and azure devops deployment group, you must pay attention to below 2 prerequisites:
1) As normal, VM is a separated machine. In order to combine them into Azure Devops and use them with CI/CD, to be precise, let the Deployment group manage to these virtual machine, you need to run script to register these VMs to VSTS deployment group.
2) Also, to deploy application to VMs via IIS, you need also ensure that these VMs web servers configured with IIS.
Above 2 is what mentioned in the doc you shared.
Our lab published a blog which describe the very detailed steps on how to Deploying to Azure VM using Deployment Groups. You can follow it to continue your configuration in VSTS pipeline.
Since it is very detailed, I would only point some key to you:
1 To configure Deployment Group agent on each of the virtual machines, firstly, please use Azure Resource Group Deployment task with Configure virtual machine deployment options action and enable prerequisites as Configure with Deployment Group agent:
2 For the configuration of IIS manage and deploy task, including physical path and etc, you can follow this(just ignore its task of start) to finish your configuration.
Note:
Here you must add 2 phases since Azure Resource Group Deployment task need run with agent job, and IIS web app manage/deploy task run with deployment group job
These are the basic steps which could help you achieve what you want.
I'm in the process of setting out Azure Devops for our organisation and although I have got things working to an extent, I still dont understand a couple of concepts that I think I should.
I have set up a Deployment Pool (Organization settings > Deployment Pools) and used the script to install and configure the Agents on my Dev, Test and Prod servers, and have been successfully able to deploy code to them
I have been able to build my projects using the Azure Hosted option for now, but I would really like to use the locally hosted option, but when looking at the Agent Pools(Organization settings > Agent Pools) I can only see my Production server and it wont let me use that build with. I clicked the button to "Download Agent" but it downloads the agent I already set up in the Deployment Pool stage using the same powershell command .config.cmd command
So as far as I can tell, there is no difference between an agent in an "Agent pool" vs a "Deployment pool", but I'm obviously missing something here as I cannot see the agent in the Agent pool.
Can anyone help me to understand what I might have missed, and why there are two totally different ways of downloading the same agent?
Many thanks!
Deployment pool are for deployment groups are a special agent configuration that are used specifically in release pipelines. They give some additional options for your release pipelines beyond the regular agents.
Deployment groups:
Specify the security context and runtime targets for the agents. As you create a deployment group, you add users and give them appropriate permissions to administer, manage, view, and use the group.
Let you view live logs for each server as a deployment takes place, and download logs for all servers to track your deployments down to individual machines.
Enable you to use machine tags to limit deployment to specific sets of target servers
It leverages the same pipeline agent but you are just specifying different configuration for the initialization. If you navigate to the Agent Pool page, there is a download link there with the configuration for setting up an agent that you can leverage in a build pipeline or in a release pipeline when you use an Agent Phase instead of a Deployment Group phase.