Self-hosted Azure DevOps agent

Posted on September 01, 2018 by Bertrand Thomas
How-to Automation Workflow

Let's see how to use a virtual machine as Azure DevOps agent.

Requirements

You need to be administrator of the virtual machine (VM).

Azure VM

• Go to Azure Portal:
  • Create the new VM (for example Windows 2019 Datacenter or Ubuntu 18.04)
  • For Windows:
    • Update networking to only allow RDP on Ops location IP
    • Download RDP file

Linux systems

Installation steps on Linux

• SSH to the machine:

  # run updates
  sudo apt-get update
  
  # download the agent file
  wget https://vstsagentpackage.azureedge.net/agent/2.168.2/vsts-agent-linux-x64-2.168.2.tar.gz
  
  # uncompress the file
  tar zxvf ../vsts-agent-linux-x64-2.168.2.tar.gz
  
  # run the configuration
  ./config.sh

Windows systems

Installation steps on Windows

• Connect to the machine (RDP with mstsc.exe):
  • Run Windows Updates
  • Enable Windows Subsystem for Linux Feature
  • Download and install Mozilla
  • Download and install Chrome
  • Download and install Notepad++
  • Download and install git
  • Download and install .NET Core
  • Download and install 7-zip
  • (Optional) Download and install Azure CLI
  • (Optional) Download and install MongoDB CLI, and:
    • Add bin directory in the PATH
  • Download and install Visual Studio Build Tools
  • Create C:\Agent folder and give all permissions to user Network service (used by Azure DevOps agent)
  • Download chromedriver.exe from chromedriver.storage.googleapis.com and extract it inside C:\Agent
    • Create a system environment variable ChromeWebDriver whose value is C:\Agent\chromedriver_win32
  • Download psexec and extract it to C:\Agent
  • Follow instuctions
    • Use Ubuntu 18.04
    • Rename to zip file, extract and move to C:\Agent
  • Open a command window, go to C:\Agent\PSTools and execute psexec -i -u "nt authority\network service" cmd.exe
    • In the new window go to C:\Agent\CanonicalGroupLimited.Ubuntu18.04onWindows_1804.2018.XXX.YYY and execute ubuntu1804.exe (see Windows Server Installation Guide and Manually download Windows Subsystem for Linux distro packages)
    • Execute bash
      • (Optional) Install MongoDB

Configuration steps on Windows

• Go to Azure DevOps, follow the documentation
  • Create a new Personal Access Token
  • Add pool from https://dev.azure.com/yourorganization/_settings/agentpools
  • Once create, click on New Agent
  • Copy agent zip file and extract it in C:\Agent
  • Download the agent file, unzip it and inside execute the command config.cmd (chose service)
  • Update agent capabilities
• (Optional) Go to external systems (such as MongoDB Atlas and Azure VM networking)
  • Add VM IP in system IP allowed list

Additional resources

• github.com/aleguillen/azure-devops-self-hosted-agent