VNext build agent : one or many

Hi. Today I want speak about short article: how configure many build agents.
If you have big infrastructure, you should use a lot of build servers. If you used TFS 2013, you probably remember that you can configure number of build agent in UI wizard of team foundation server.


But if you migrate to tfs 2015 or early version, you will work with VNext technology. The short term VNext is use powershell script anywhere. All activity in TFS that you see is powershell scripts. This is easy configure and use it.

By the way. If you want add custom vnext activity in your on premise tfs, you should switch on basic authentication in your TFS. If it's impossible, you should wait TFS update 2. In this update we can upload any custom VNext activity that you want.

So, come back to our theme. Imagine, that you have big enterprise product. And you need build in a lot of build servers. When you install VNext build agent servers, you discover that count of build agent equal count of (virtual/physic) servers. What should you do? Can you install few build agents in one machine? The answer is yes!

Install few build VNext agents

First what you need to do, is download powershell script from tfs.

Aftert that unzip archive to some folder. If you don't want configure word folder for each build agent, make sure that you have enough place in the disk, where you unzip script.

After this start install bat file, and put some information.

Pay attention to red arrow. You should add different. For example:

• First start script- ServerXXX_Agent01
• Second start script - ServerXXX_Agent02

So the main idea, that put different name to this place when you start script.
I my recommendation : install as service. Because for my opinion console mode should use in like a dev machine. Where you need for short term switch on/of build agents.