Question About Azure DevOps Agents and GitLab-Style Executors in Kubernetes

Yann ILAS 0

Hello,

I’m currently working with Azure DevOps to manage CI/CD pipelines in an on-premises environment and have a question about the use of Azure DevOps agents in a Kubernetes setup.

In GitLab, it’s possible to use executors in a Kubernetes cluster to create ephemeral environments and run jobs in dedicated pods (as outlined here: GitLab Executors Kubernetes Documentation).

Does Azure DevOps offer similar functionality ? Specifically, can it dynamically create and destroy agents, or use agents to deploy ephemeral environments and execute jobs in dedicated pods within a Kubernetes cluster, particularly in an on-premises context ?

If anyone has experience or resources related to this, I’d greatly appreciate your insights.

Thank you in advance !

Sai Krishna Katakam 1,085 Reputation points Microsoft Vendor

2024-11-18T15:56:45.3666667+00:00

Hi Yann ILAS,

Welcome to Microsoft Q&A Platform, thanks for posting your query here. Azure DevOps related queries/issues are currently not supported on this Microsoft Q&A platform.

I would request you to please post your queries in dedicated forums as in below links:

https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/spaces/21/index.html
https://developercommunity.visualstudio.com/t/get-unique-id-from-devops-organization/756710
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/azure-devops

1 answer

Akram Kathimi 1,126 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-11-19T11:17:57.3566667+00:00
Hi @Yann ILAS ,

Akram from the AKS team here.

Yes, you can run the Azure DevOps agents as pods in AKS.

You will need to create your own docker image from the Dockerfile mentioned here.

Then, follow the steps here to create the needed secrets and deployments.

Please keep in mind that Docker in Docker (DIND) tasks will not be able to run due to the usage of containerd instead of docker in AKS.

Hope this helps :).
Please mark this as an answer if it did help.

Thank you.
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Yann ILAS 0 Reputation points

2024-11-22T08:23:51.9166667+00:00

I already have an agent running as a Docker image, and it works fine, but does this mean that all the tools required for the build/CI must be pre-installed in the Azure DevOps agent ? Is there no way to spawn a pod from the agent using a custom Docker image (similar to what's described in the GitLab Kubernetes Executors Documentation) ?

Akram Kathimi 1,126 Reputation points Microsoft Employee

2024-11-23T08:43:19.72+00:00

The agent pod will be running the job. No new pods will be created. However, you can add tools and customize the container from the Dockerfile and its associated files.

Please check this part of the doc https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/docker?view=azure-devops#add-tools-and-customize-the-container
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Question About Azure DevOps Agents and GitLab-Style Executors in Kubernetes

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