Configure pool settings

This article describes how to configure the basic settings of your Managed DevOps Pool.

Go to Overview to view an overview of pool settings, move Azure resources to a new resource group or subscription, or configure tags. Managed DevOps Pools passes up to 20 tags to the VM, and the rest are ignored.

Screenshot of pool overview essentials.

To configure your pool, go to Settings > Pool.

Screenshot of Pool settings menu.

Use the following settings to configure your Managed DevOps Pool.

Dev Center project

Choose the Dev Center project for your Managed DevOps Pool. During pool creation, you can create a Dev Center and Dev Center project if you don't have one.

Screenshot of Dev Center settings.

Azure DevOps organization

If your Managed DevOps Pool is configured for a single Azure DevOps organization, you can specify the organization in pool settings.

Screenshot of configuring a single organization.

If your pool is configured for multiple organizations, the Azure DevOps organization setting is not present in pool settings. To configure your pool for use in multiple organizations, go to Settings > Security, and configure Use pool in multiple organizations.

By default, your Managed DevOps Pool is available to all projects in your specified organizations. To limit your pool to specific projects, see Security settings - configure organization access.

Maximum agents

Specify the maximum count of agents that can be provisioned at a given time in your pool. For example, if you specify a Maximum agents value of 2, you can run a maximum of two agents at the same time. If more than two jobs are queued, only two agents at a time will run jobs while the other jobs wait.

You can view the current status and count of the provisioned agents in your pool using the Agents pane. All of the agents in the Agents view (with the exception of agents with a Returned status) are running on a virtual machine resource, and count towards the Maximum agents count.

Maximum agents is configured in Pool settings for an existing pool, and on the Basics tab when creating a pool.

Screenshot of Maximum agents setting.

Note

Maximum agents configures the maximum number of agents that can be provisioned at the same time, but your organization's self-hosted parallel jobs count specifies the number of jobs that can run concurrently. Ensure that you have enough self-hosted parallel jobs available in your organization to enable your agents to run jobs. For more information, see Azure DevOps Services parallel job pricing.

Agent size

Agent size specifies the Azure virtual machine size to use for hosting your Managed DevOps Pools agents.

Screenshot of Agent size setting.

Choose Change size to view and select an Azure virtual machine size that is available in your Azure region. Agent sizes (SKUs) with available Managed DevOps Pools quotas are marked as Available. You can request more quota for Not Available SKUs. Once a quota request for a Not Available SKU is approved, it will then be listed as Available. Learn more about Managed DevOps Pools quotas.

If your subscription doesn't have the capacity to configure your pool with desired Azure VM SKU and maximum agents count, you'll receive an error similar to the following message. Cores needed to complete this request is 8, which exceeds the current limit of 0 for SKU family standardDDSv4Family in region eastus. Please choose a different region if possible, or request additional quota at https://portal.azure.com/#view/Microsoft_Azure_Support/NewSupportRequestV3Blade/issueType/quota/subscriptionId/subscription_id_placeholder/topicId/3eadc5d3-b59a-3658-d8c6-9c729ba35b97. To resolve the issue, see Review Managed DevOps Pools quotas.

Not all SKUs are supported for all Azure regions. If you receive an error like SKU family <sku-family> is not available in location <region>, ensure your SKU size is supported for your region. For more information, see Sizes for virtual machines in Azure and Products available by region.

OS disk type

Managed DevOps Pools provides the following disk types for the OS disk.

  • Standard
  • Standard SSD
  • Premium SSD

The default OS disk type is Standard. If your workload's throughput exceeds the level of the standard tier, you can potentially gain a performance improvement in your workload by upgrading to a more performant disk type. For more information on disk types and performance, see Azure Managed disk types.

OS disk type is configured in Pool settings for an existing pool, and on the Basics tab when creating a pool.

Screenshot of OS disk type setting.

Images

Managed DevOps Pools provides you with several options for virtual machine images for running pipelines in your pool. You can create your pool using selected Azure Marketplace VM images, use your own custom images in an Azure Compute Gallery, or use the same Windows and Linux images used by Azure Pipelines Microsoft-hosted agents.

Screenshot of configure image.

You can configure your pool to use a single image or multiple images, and use aliases to configure your pipelines to use a specific image. For more information, see Configure Managed DevOps Pools images.

See also