A Bamboo agent is a service that provides capabilities to run Job builds. There are two types of Bamboo agents:
- local agents run as part of the Bamboo server.
- remote agents are computers other than the Bamboo server that run the remote agent tool.
An elastic agent is a remote agent that runs in the Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2).
Local agents run in the server's process, i.e. in the same JVM as the server. Each remote agent runs in its own process, i.e. has its own JVM.)
A capability is a feature of an agent. A capability can be:
- an executable (e.g. Maven)
- a JDK
- a custom capability (a key-value property which defines a particular characteristic of an agent, e.g. 'operating.system=WindowsXP' or 'fast.builds=true')
- a Version Control System client application (e.g. Git, if Git is being used as the source repository)
Capabilities can be defined specifically for an agent, or they can be shared between either all local agents or all remote agents. Note that the value of an agent-specific capability overrides the value of a shared capability of the same name (if one exists).
See Configuring Capabilities for more information.
On this page:
How Do Capabilities Work With Requirements?
A requirement is specified in a Job or a Task. A requirement specifies a capability that an agent must have for it to build that Job or Task. A Job inherits all of the requirements specified in its Tasks.
Together, capabilities and requirements control which agents can execute builds for particular Jobs. Each Job can only be built by agents whose capabilities meet the Job's requirements.
See Configuring a Job's Requirements for more information.How Are Builds Distributed to Agents?
An agent will consume a single Job at a time and block any other Bamboo Jobs from being processed until that Job build is complete. If you would like to build multiple Jobs simultaneously on the Bamboo server, then simply set up multiple local agents. If the agents are remote, then you will need to install that number of agent instances on the machine. Separate installations are required because each remote agent will need its own home and log directories.
How do Capabilities Affect the Distribution of Builds to Agents?*
Related Topics
For more information on configuring agents and capabilities, see the following topics:
Overview
Content Tools
Apps
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