Is a build agent required for each project in a collection?

Question

I have a TFS 2018 on-premise server and a separate build server. The build server has an agent that appears "on-line" on the TFS server in the "Agents for pool Default" area of the collection. However, if I go to a project in that collection I do not see the agent registered in that projects "Agents for pool" section.

Do I need an agent for each project? If so, how is that separated on the build server? Is there any documentation specific to my question? I have not found any that address this specifically.

Answer 1

I have an older version, TFS 2015 On-Premise, so the navigation path is different. But on VSTS/Azure Devops I had the same issue and this was my solution: Go to the project that needs the Agent Pool, click on "New Agent", select "Base on existing org agent pool", select the agent pool, and then you are done. Now it should be visible to the definition.

Answer 2

There are two entities:

• Agent pools exist at the server-level.
• Agent queues exist at the project-level, and reference an agent pool.

So, no, you do not need a separate agent for each project. However, you do need a separate agent queue, pointing to the agent pool used across all the other projects.

Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/pools-queues?view=vsts