Is there a way to automatically free up unused agent license when using elastic agents

[Tim Kopplow]

Hi Atlassian Community.

Currently i'm trying to implement elastic windows agents to our bamboo server because we have build jobs that rarely needs to get build using a specific windows machine. 

And to not have this machine running 24/7 without anything to do i would like to utilize the elastic feature of bamboo. 

Now to my problem. The licensing.

• We have a License for a relatively small amount of Agents which we utilize to 100% because they're all used very regularly and not using an agent license is a massive waste of money.
• We don't have such a huge license that i might wouldn't care if 1 license spot just get's left freed up for eventual consumption

When i want to use elastic images i assume i need free licenses at the time of agent spin up. How does this work in real-life without wasting money having spare agent licenses lying around?

Is there a mechanism that allows for dynamic license shifting if an agent is not getting used when an elastic agent is needed?

Thanks in advance for Answers! :) 

[Shashank Kumar]

Hello Tim,

Welcome to Atlassian community.

Bamboo measures license usage based on the number of active agents connected to Bamboo server at a particular point in time.

Question : When i want to use elastic images i assume i need free licenses at the time of agent spin up. How does this work in real-life without wasting money having spare agent licenses lying around?

Answer : Yes your assumption is correct here, for the elastic instance to spin up you should have active agent count less than the number of license you have. 

This might be a problem in scenario where say you have 10 licenses and there are 10 remote agents which are connected to the Bamboo server and is active ( it may not be building anything and sitting idle, but it is considered active and ready to receive the builds), here to start the elastic instance you have to shutdown any of the active remote agents.

To cater to this scenario, Bamboo has introduced the below types of agents which does it's Job and shuts down if there is nothing to execute ( saving cost as well as bandwidth ).

1) Elastic agents

2) Ephermal agents

Question : Is there a mechanism that allows for dynamic license shifting if an agent is not getting used when an elastic agent is needed?

Answer : As far as I am aware there isin't anything available by default of Bamboo, probably you can customise something where it would check if a remote agent is idle and shut it down and free the license. 

Regards,

Shashank Kumar

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