Tech Tips

Background I have recently been posting on using Azure to host private VSTS build/release agents to avoid agent queue deadlocking issues with more complex release pipelines. One of the areas discussed is reducing cost of running a private agent in Azure by only running the private agent within a limited time range, when you guess it might be needed. I have done this using DevTest Labs Auto Start and Auto Stop features. This works, but is it not better to only start the agent VM when it is actually really needed, not when you guess it might be? I need this private agent only when working on my VSTS extensions, not something I do everyday. Why waste CPU cycles that are never used? ...

In my last post I discussed creating a private VSTS build agent within an Azure DevTest Lab on a VM with no GUI. It was pointed out to me today, by Rik Hepworth, that I had overlooked an obvious alternative way to get the VSTS agent onto the VM i.e. not having to use a series of commands at an RDP connected command prompt. The alternative I missed is to use a DevTest Lab Artifact; in fact there is such an artifact available within the standard set in DevTest Labs. You just provide a few parameters and you are good to go. Well you should be good to go, but there is an issue. The PowerShell used to extract the downloaded Build Agent ZIP file does not work on a non-UI based Windows VM. The basic issue here is discussed in this post by my fellow ALM MVP Ricci Gian Maria. Luckily the fix is simple; I just used the same code to do the extraction of the ZIP file that I used in my previous post. I have submitted this fix as a Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team so hopefully the standard repository will have the fix soon and you won’t need to do a fork to create a private artifacts repo as I have. Update 1st December 2017 The Pull Request to the DevTest Lab Team with the fixed code has been accepted and the fix is now in the master branch of the public artifact repo, so automatically available to all ...

Updates 28th Nov 2017: Also see this second post Creating a VSTS build agent on an Azure DevLabs Windows Server VM with no GUI - Using Artifacts 30th Nov 2017: Also see associated post Announcing a new VSTS Extension for Starting and Stopping Azure DevTest Labs VMs As I posted recently I have been trying to add more functional tests to the VSTS based release CI/CD pipeline for my VSTS Extensions, and as I noted depending on how you want to run your tests e.g. trigger sub-builds, you can end up with scheduling deadlocks where a single build agent is scheduling the release and trying to run a new build. The answer is to use a second build agent in a different agent pool e.g. if the release is running on the Hosted build agent use a private build agent for the sub-build, or of course just pay for more hosted build instances. The problem with a private build agent is where to run it. As my extensions are a personal project I don’t have a corporate Hyper-V server to run any extra private agents on, as I would have for an company projects. My MVP MSDN Azure benefits are the obvious answer, but I want any agents to be cheap to run, so I don’t burn through all my MSDN credits for a single build agent. To this end I created a Windows Server 2016 VM in DevLabs (I prefer to create my VMs in DevLabs as it makes it easier tidying up of my Azure account) using an A0 sizing VM. This is tiny so cheap; I don’t intend to ever do a build on this agent, just schedule releases, so need to install few if any tools, so the size should not be an issue. To further reduce costs I used the auto start and stop features on the VM so it is only running during the hours I might be working. So I get an admittedly slow and limited private build agent but for less that $10 a month. As the VM is small it makes sense to not run a GUI. This means when you RDP to the new VM you just get a command prompt. So how do you get the agent onto the VM and setup? You can’t just open a browser to VSTS or cut and paste a file via RDP, and I wanted to avoid the complexity of having to open up PowerShell remoting on the VM. The process I used was as follows: ...

BlogEngine.Net has served us well as a blogging platform for a good few years. However, it is no longer under active support, so it is time to move on, too much risk of future security issues to ignore the lack of support. After a bit of thought we decided on WordPress as a replacement. OK this has had its own history of problems, but it has an active community and is well supported and in the Azure Marketplace. ...

Updated: 5th Aug 2016 added notes in PublisherID I have been developing a few VSTS/TFS build related extensions and have published a few in the VSTS marketplace. This has all been a somewhat manual process, a mixture of Gulp and PowerShell has helped a bit, but I decided it was time to try to do a more formal approach. To do this I have used Jesse Houwing’s VSTS Extension Tasks. Even with this set of tasks I am not sure what I have is ‘best practice’, but it does work. The doubt is due to the way the marketplace handles revisions and preview flags. What I have works for me, but ‘your mileage may differ’ ...

**Updated 22 Mar 2016 **This task is available in the VSTS Marketplace If you are using Pester to unit test your PowerShell code then there is a good chance you will want to include it in your automated build process. To do this, you need to get Pester installed on your build machine. The usual options would be Manual install from GitHub Install via Chocolaty Install via Nuget If you own the build agent VM then any of these options are good, you can even write the NuGet restore into your build process itself. However there is a problem, both the first two options need administrative access as they put the Pester module in the $PSModules folder (under ‘Program Files’); so these can’t be used on VSTS’s hosted build system, where your are not an administrator So this means you are left with copying the module (and associated functions folder) to some local working folder and running it manually; but do you really want to have to store the Pester module in your source repo? My solution was to write a vNext build tasks to deploy the Pester files and run the Pester tests. The task takes two parameters ...