Skip to main content

VSTS Build–Private Build slots; you only get one for free!

By default when you are using VSTS(aka Visual Studio Online), you get the following extra services as part of your subscription:

Build and Deployment: Use this task-based service to create, queue, and monitor cross-platform builds. Use Hosted Agents that Microsoft runs, or Private Agents that you run so that you can install custom software.

  • Build(XAML)/ Build and Deployment: Create build definitions  and run them in Visual Studio Team Services. Configure builds to run on demand at specific intervals, or for continuous integration (CI). Builds are charged per minute for the actual amount of computing time used to build your project.

  • Cloud-based Load Testing: Create load tests using Visual Studio Ultimate 2013, Visual Studio Enterprise 2015, or later. Run those tests in Visual Studio Team Services. Load tests are measured and billed in virtual user minutes: the number of virtual users multiplied by the number of minutes that you set up for the load test run.

Your Visual Studio Team Services account includes free amounts of these additional services:

  • Build (XAML) / Build and Deployment: combined 240 minutes (4 hours) per month

  • Cloud-based Load Testing: 20,000 virtual user minutes per month

With the new Build and Deployment you get 2 things:

  • One hosted build agent that runs on a build server provided by Microsoft
  • One private build agent that you can install on your own hardware(virtual or physical)

I wasn’t aware of the second thing, so I got into troubles when I tried to add a second private build agent and ended up with some weird errors. Luckily it is easy to buy extra private agents through the Azure Portal. Here are the steps you need to follow: https://www.visualstudio.com/docs/setup-admin/team-services/get-more-build-or-load-testing-vs#AzurePortal

Click Paid. Select total number of agents. Save your changes

Remark: The hosted XAML build service will be retired by September 2016.

Labels:

Popular posts from this blog

Azure DevOps/ GitHub emoji

I’m really bad at remembering emoji’s. So here is cheat sheet with all emoji’s that can be used in tools that support the github emoji markdown markup: All credits go to rcaviers who created this list.
Read more

Podman– Command execution failed with exit code 125

After updating WSL on one of the developer machines, Podman failed to work. When we took a look through Podman Desktop, we noticed that Podman had stopped running and returned the following error message: Error: Command execution failed with exit code 125 Here are the steps we tried to fix the issue: We started by running podman info to get some extra details on what could be wrong: >podman info OS: windows/amd64 provider: wsl version: 5.3.1 Cannot connect to Podman. Please verify your connection to the Linux system using `podman system connection list`, or try `podman machine init` and `podman machine start` to manage a new Linux VM Error: unable to connect to Podman socket: failed to connect: dial tcp 127.0.0.1:2655: connectex: No connection could be made because the target machine actively refused it. That makes sense as the podman VM was not running. Let’s check the VM: >podman machine list NAME         ...
Read more

Cleaner switch expressions with pattern matching in C#

Ever find yourself mapping multiple string values to the same result? Being a C# developer for a long time, I sometimes forget that the C# has evolved so I still dare to chain case labels or reach for a dictionary. Of course with pattern matching this is no longer necessary. With pattern matching, you can express things inline, declaratively, and with zero repetition. A small example I was working on a small script that should invoke different actions depending on the environment. As our developers were using different variations for the same environment e.g.  "tst" alongside "test" , "prd" alongside "prod" .  We asked to streamline this a long time ago, but as these things happen, we still see variations in the wild. This brought me to the following code that is a perfect example for pattern matching: The or keyword here is a logical pattern combinator , not a boolean operator. It matches if either of the specified pattern...
Read more