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I'm using the free visual studio (Now Team Services)

VSTS hosted build by definition needs an always-on box. It's shown with a green box under available agents.

I have a machine at home which I want to run these builds. EVerything works fine when the machine is up and running, I want to know if there is a way to use the box when it's in power saving (sleep/hibernate)?

I can RDP / browse to that box when it's in sleep/hibernate mode it just takes a few seconds to come back up so I need to retry the connection a few times.

Is there a way to:

  1. Force a build agent to be used if it appears offline?
  2. Retry accessing that build agent for x number of minutes (to give it time to wake up) ?
user281921
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1 Answers1

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Regarding Hosted Build agent, it isn’t under our control, you can’t log on (RDP/browse) or install new software. It applies the agent automatically when you queue build, so you don’t need to worry sleep/hibernate mode.

Regarding on premise build agent:

You can’t force a build agent to be used of it is offline, but you can force to queue build with a queue that there aren’t any agents available (online), the builds are in queue and start to build once there is an agent available (meet capacity).

starian chen-MSFT
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  • I'm referring to on-premise only. If I force the build with no available agents, is there any way to get the queue to 'wake-up' or try and access these agents? – user281921 Feb 09 '17 at 11:41
  • @user281921 It can't 'wake-up' the agent machine, it listens agents whether in online state, you need to wake up it by yourself. – starian chen-MSFT Feb 10 '17 at 02:25
  • Hmm ok last question then. Can I add a custom step to the build process which would fire off a process to send a magic packet to the server, or would the server need to be available before the build can even start. – user281921 Feb 10 '17 at 09:10
  • @user281921 The build agent should be available (online) before the build can be start, so server need to be available first of all. – starian chen-MSFT Feb 10 '17 at 09:31