Elastic Bamboo FAQ

How do I run a plan build and its jobs on an elastic agent?

An elastic agent operates in a similar way to a non-elastic agent. The Bamboo server will determine if any job builds in the queue can be built on any of the available agents (including elastic agents), based on whether or not the capabilities of these agents meet the requirements of these jobs.

If an available elastic agent (like any other available agent) has capabilities which meet the requirements of a build in the build queue, the Bamboo server will assign the job build to that elastic agent.

If you do not have any free elastic agents running, you can configure Bamboo to automatically start up elastic instances whose elastic agents are capable of running job builds in the queue, or you can start up an appropriate elastic instance manually. (When an elastic instance is started, its elastic agent is also started, automatically.) For more information about starting elastic instances manually, refer to Starting an elastic instance.

If you do not use Bamboo's Automatic Elastic Instance Management feature and prefer to manage your elastic instances manually, then we strongly recommend that you shut down any elastic instances (running your elastic agents), when they are not in use. Minimising unutilised elastic instance uptime will help reduce costs. Read Shutting down an elastic instance for instructions on how to shut down an elastic instance.

How do I automatically start or shut down elastic instances for job builds?

Bamboo can automatically start elastic instances based on demand from the build queue and shut them down once the elastic agents running on them have been idle for a specified period of time. For more information, please refer to the Automatic Elastic Instance Management section of the Configuring Elastic Bamboo topic.

While Bamboo's Automatic Elastic Instance Management feature is the easiest and most effective method of managing elastic instances in Bamboo, you can also manage elastic instances using the Bamboo REST API. For example, you could implement cron jobs to intelligently start and stop elastic instances, so that elastic agents are available at key times for your job builds.

How do I know whether my job build was run on an elastic agent?

The name of the image and elastic agent that ran a job build can be viewed as part of the build result. Please see the Viewing a build result page for more information.

How do I customise the capabilities of my elastic agents?

You may want to customise the capabilities of your elastic agents to suit certain jobs in your plans. For example, if you want to force certain job builds to only run on elastic agents, you can add a custom capability of elastic=true to your elastic agents and add the same requirement to these jobs.

To customise the capabilities for your elastic agents, you need to customise the capabilities of the image that they are created from. Read Configuring elastic agent capabilities for instructions.

How much does it cost to run a build?

As Elastic Bamboo usage varies from customer to customer, we cannot provide a definitive cost estimate for running a job build using Elastic Bamboo. We do provide high level guidelines for Elastic Bamboo costs, based on our own experience of using Elastic Bamboo at Atlassian, on the Elastic Bamboo Costs page.

You can significantly reduce the costs and time taken to run a job build by configuring Elastic Bamboo to use Automatic Elastic Instance Management and Amazon's Elastic Block Store (EBS).

What is EBS and how does it affect my job builds?

The Amazon Elastic Block Store (EBS) provides persistent storage volumes that can be attached to EC2 instances. Elastic Bamboo can use the EBS to store snapshots of relatively static build information, such as checkouts of source code and Maven repository data. You can choose a snapshot to create EBS volumes from. These volumes can then be attached to your elastic instances when they start up.