Azure DevOps - Self Hosted Agents on AKS

Deprecated -- please consider using https://github.com/Azure/aks-github-runner

This repo provides instructions and configuration to setup Self Hosted Agents for Azure DevOps running on an AKS cluster. It was derived from this article by Jonathan Gardner @jgardner04, as well as a similar project by Mate Barbas using ARM templates. This project utilizes terraform and helm to provide support for a repeatable infrastructure as code approach. The process is orchestrated through an Azure DevOps (ADO) pipeline.

Setup

1. Create an Azure DevOps (ADO) project, and clone or fork this repo into it
   • Make sure you enable the Multi-stage pipelines preview feature for your user or your org by following the directions here

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2. Create an Azure Resource Manager Service connection in Azure DevOps

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3. Run the manual setup script ./manual.sh from Azure CLI or Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) on your wokstation.

Syntax: ./manual.sh [-s applicationId] [-p password]

This script does the following: - Create service principal for use by terraform and AKS (optionally, you can use -s for the Application Id and -p for the spn password) - Save service principal and other provided variables in keyvault - Authorize the selected SPN in keyvault

This command will ask for your Azure subscription id, as well as the name (arbitrary string of your choice), env (arbitrary string of your choice), location (valid Azure region) for your AKS cluster, the name of your azure devops organization, name of the pool and Azure token.

4. Create a variable group named "ado-kv" and associate it with the key vault you just created:

   • Toggle Link secrets from an Azure key vault as variables
   • Select your subscription and the key vault you created in the previous step
   • Authorize it for use in the pipelines
   • Add all the variables aviable in your key vault If authorize doesn't work, use:

   az keyvault set-policy --name VAULTNAME --spn SPNId --secret-permissions get list

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5. Create another variable group named "ado-config":
   • Add a variable named azure_sub
   • Set that value for the created variable as the name used for the Service Connection in step 2
   • Authorize it for use in the pipelines

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6. Create a pipeline using the provided YAML file ./pipeline/pipeline.yml, and run it:
   • From Azure DevOps click on Pipelines in the left navigation bar and click on Create pipeline
   • On the page Where is your code? select Azure Repos Git YAML
   • Select your repository in Azure DevOps
   • On the page Configure your pipeline select Existing Azure Pipelines YAML file and set the path to pipeline/pipeline.yml
   • Click on Continue and then on Run

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Possible additions

• Consider AAD integrated AKS cluster (not currently used, as it makes the AD permissions required a bit complex )
• Add 2nd nodepool, with windows agents
• Add cluster/pod autoscale

Other options

• Use a docker hub image, and remove the need for ACR (gambtho/azure-pipeline-agent)
• Add to azpdocker/Dockerfile any additional tools you may need

Contributions

This repo is a work in progress, pull requests and suggestions are greatly appreciated

Maintainers

Thomas Gamble [email protected]