Problem

When starting an Elastic Agent, the Elastic Computing Cloud (EC2) host machine starts and the Bamboo agent loads about 7 to 8 minutes later. In this article we'll explain why that is.

For example, when starting a new Elastic agent, you might see a sequence of events such as: 

11:12 Request instance start
11:13 EC2 reports "Windows is ready to use"
11:14 Start transferring JAR files from S3
11:16 Transfer configuration and instance data from Bamboo server to EC2
11:16 Sync plugin state with main server
11:19 Transfer complete, starting agent
11:19 "Bamboo agent 'Elastic Agent on <instance hash>' ready to receive builds."

Cause

Bamboo requests the Elastic instance, and triggers a series of data synchronizations with both your master Bamboo server and an Amazon S3 bucket where Bamboo JAR files are stored.

Most of the time is consumed in these transfer steps:

• Start transferring JAR files from S3: Bamboo Java files are downloaded from Amazon S3 to ensure that you are using the newest versions of Bamboo and the Elastic agent bootstrap.
• Transfer configuration and instance data from Bamboo server to EC2: A call is made from the Elastic agent to your Bamboo server, where configurations, including log settings are transferred to the EC2 instance.

• Sync plugin state with main server: This is likely the longest of these transfers, and the only one you can control. The plugins from your Bamboo server are zipped, sent to the EC2 instance, and loaded so that the Elastic agent can run your plans.

Adjusting the required startup time

The startup time could be reduced by reducing the number of plugins to send from your local server to EC2. To do this, you can uninstall some User-installed plugins from the Universal Plugin Manager (UPM) in Bamboo Administration >> Add-ons