Azure DevOps Agent Containers

Looking to run some Azure DevOps Agents in containers? Libre DevOps have developed a solution to help you get started end to end

Build containers using Windows or Linux
All done via Azure DevOps
Builds weekly
Check the source files here
Agent Name is auto-generated for pool to avoid conflicts, in format:
- Linux: azdo-lnx-agent-${ddmmyyy}-${random_chars}
- Windows: azdo-win-agent-${ddmmyyyy}-${RANDOM_NUMBERS}

This is an example, please ensure you read and accept all license terms regarding software used in these example builds

High-level info

CI/CD with Azure DevOps
- Using easy, readable, script params instead of in-built Steps, Templates & Actions for easy migrations to other CI/CDs
Container registry using GitHub Packages with Github Container Registry
Example scripts in Podman, CI/CD pipelines in Podman for Linux and Docker for Windows
Linux Images used in the repo:
- RedHat 8 Universal Basic Image
- Ubuntu 20.04
Windows Image used in the repo:
- Windows Server 2019/2022 LTSC

Quickstart

Linux

docker run -it ghcr.io/libre-devops/azdo-agent-rhel:latest \
-e AZP_URL="${AZP_URL}" \
-e AZP_TOKEN="${AZP_TOKEN}" \
-e AZP_POOL="${AZP_POOL}" \
-e AZP_WORK="${AZP_WORK}"

Or using podman in a startup script

#!/usr/bin/env bash

REPO="ghcr.io"

USER="libre-devops"
IMAGE_NAME="azdo-agent-rhel"
TAGS=":latest"

AZP_URL="https://dev.azure.com/example"
AZP_TOKEN="example-pat-token"
AZP_POOL="example-pool"
AZP_WORK="_work"

podman run -it \
    -e AZP_URL="${AZP_URL}" \
    -e AZP_TOKEN="${AZP_TOKEN}" \
    -e AZP_POOL="${AZP_POOL}" \
    -e AZP_WORK="${AZP_WORK}" \
    "${REPO}/${USER}/${IMAGE_NAME}${TAGS}"

Windows

docker run -it ghcr.io/libre-devops/azdo-agent-winservercoreltsc2022:latest \
-e AZP_URL="${AZP_URL}" \
-e AZP_TOKEN="${AZP_TOKEN}" \
-e AZP_POOL="${AZP_POOL}" \
-e AZP_WORK="${AZP_WORK}"

Startup script

#!/usr/bin/env pwsh

$REPO="ghcr.io"

$USER="libre-devops"
$IMAGE_NAME="azdo-agent-winsevercoreltsc2019"
$TAGS = ":latest"

$AZP_URL="https://dev.azure.com/example"
$AZP_TOKEN="example-pat-token"
$AZP_POOL="example-pool"
$AZP_WORK="_work"

docker run -it --rm `
    -e AZP_URL="${AZP_URL}" `
    -e AZP_TOKEN="${AZP_TOKEN}" `
    -e AZP_POOL="${AZP_POOL}" `
    -e AZP_WORK="${AZP_WORK}" `
    "${REPO}/${USER}/${IMAGE_NAME}${TAGS}"

Kubernetes

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  creationTimestamp: 2022-04-16T11:00:00Z
  name: azdo-agents-deployment
  labels:
    app: azdo-agents
spec:
  replicas: 4
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: azdo-agents
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: azdo-agents
    spec:
      containers:
        - image: ghcr.io/libre-devops/azdo-agent-rhel:latest
          name: agent
          env:
            - name: AZP_URL
              value: "https://dev.azure.com/example"

            - name: AZP_TOKEN
              value: "example-pat-token"

            - name: AZP_POOL
              value: "example-pool"

            - name: AZP_WORK
              value: "_work"

          resources: { }
      restartPolicy: Always
status: {}

Podman-in-Podman

Looking to run Podman containers within a container? The Linux containers in this repo support it!. To do this however, you do need to run the container in --priviledged mode. You can still run it as a standard user. Here is an example on how to run interactively

#!/usr/bin/env bash

REPO="ghcr.io"

USER="libre-devops"
IMAGE_NAME="azdo-agent-rhel"
TAGS=":latest"

AZP_URL="https://dev.azure.com/example"
AZP_TOKEN="example-pat-token"
AZP_POOL="example-pool"
AZP_WORK="_work"

podman run -it --rm --privileged -u root \
    -e AZP_URL="${AZP_URL}" \
    -e AZP_TOKEN="${AZP_TOKEN}" \
    -e AZP_POOL="${AZP_POOL}" \
    -e AZP_WORK="${AZP_WORK}" \
    "${REPO}/${USER}/${IMAGE_NAME}${TAGS} \
    bash"

And then inside the container:

root@7483265642f0:/azp# podman run -it ubuntu:latest
Resolved "ubuntu" as an alias (/etc/containers/registries.conf.d/000-shortnames.conf)
Trying to pull docker.io/library/ubuntu:latest...
Getting image source signatures
Copying blob e0b25ef51634 done
Copying config 825d55fb63 done
Writing manifest to image destination
Storing signatures
root@7483265642f0:/# ls
bin  boot  dev  etc  home  lib  lib32  lib64  libx32  media  mnt  opt  proc  root  run  sbin  srv  sys  tmp  usr  var

Alternatively, you can fork the repo and edit the pipelines to include your secrets as build args into the template!

Info

On Linux:
- Various packages and updates needed.
- Python - Latest version with argument at pipeline level for roll-back options - This is for Azure-CLI which I wish to be part of ALL of my agents
- Azure-CLI - Installed via global pip3
- PowerShell 7 - With all Azure modules downloaded (these are around 2GB in size, which is why its part of the base)
- The script which will execute on CMD in the container, which will fetch the latest Azure Pipelines agent on execution
On Windows:
- Chocolatey and Scoop installed
- Python - Latest version from chocolatey
- Azure-CLI - Latest version from chocolatey
- Git - Latest from chocolatey (and will also install Bash)
- 7-Zip
- Scoop “extras” bucket

Some others notes:

We do not own or give any explicit license agreements which may be contained with the software in these images, but have given images for examples and published them to allow experiments . The images are as follows:

Image - Standard Image with Python, PowerShell and Azure-CLI, examples in this repo: rhel, ubuntu, winseverltsc2019, winseverltsc2022
All images are tagged as latest and available in ghcr.io/libre-devops

Source: docs/documents/azure-devops-agent-container.md