Recommended specs for remote Bamboo agent Windows servers?

[Steve Campbell]

We are using Bamboo Data Center and with 5 remote agents running on a Windows server. The server itself is in VMware.

We are trying to reduce the duration of our builds. The builds are long under normal circumstances, but if more than 1 agent is running the build duration can increase up to double the time.

As a first step, we have doubled the number of CPUs on the server, but it hasn't had much effect. 

I can't find published recommendations for servers running remote Bamboo agents. Does anyone have any experience with remote agents running in a data center on a Windows server and can give me some pointers?

Current build server specs:

Windows Server 2016 Standard

16 CPUs
Processor Intel(R) Xeon(R) Gold 6132 CPU @ 2.60GHz, 2594 Mhz, 1 Core(s), 1 Logical Processor(s)

Installed Physical Memory (RAM) 32.0 GB
Total Physical Memory 32.0 GB
Available Physical Memory 16.4 GB
Total Virtual Memory 36.7 GB
Available Virtual Memory 19.4 GB
Page File Space 4.75 GB

[Eduardo Alvarenga · Accepted solution]

Hello @Steve Campbell

The machine specs for a Bamboo build agent will depend pretty much on your build workload. The Agent, per se, may consume up to the limit set on its <bamboo-agent-home>/conf/wrapper.conf file under "wrapper.java.initmemory/maxmemory". You may need to adjust that limit in case you are using plugins/apps with Bamboo that require more memory to run.

All the other CPU/Memory/Disk resources should be calculated based on your builds and how much they require.

If you install more than one Agent on the same machine, have that sizing calculation in mind in case parallel builds are executed on the same hardware.

Best regards,

Eduardo Alvarenga
Atlassian Support APAC

--please don't forget to Accept the answer if the reply is helpful-- 

[Steve Campbell]

Hi @Eduardo Alvarenga ,

Thanks for your reply.

I found the file and setting that you mention above. Currently, it reads:

# Maximum Java Heap Size (in MB)
wrapper.java.maxmemory=512

I'm open to adjusting that but need some clarification. What do you mean by "plugins/apps with Bamboo that require more memory to run"? Can you give an example of that?

The only thing that I can think of is MSBuild (VS Studio 2022). According to MS, this requires:

• Minimum of 4 GB of RAM. Many factors impact resources used; we recommend 16 GB RAM for typical professional solutions.

I would think that the setting you refer to is just memory for running the agent itself to do things like talk to the Bamboo instance, handle artifacts and logs, etc. Surely MSBuild is not running inside the JVM.

[Steve Campbell]

We ended up increasing RAM on that server. It didn't cut the build duration itself, but it definitely made a difference with the duration of concurrent builds.

The answer for us was adding 16 GB of RAM per agent. There is now a small increase in build duration while multiple agents are running for some build plans, but overall it's negligible.