Displaying Self-Hosted Agents on Classic Release Pipeline (Azure DevOps)
Recently, in my role as a data engineer, I undertook the task of converting our Azure SQL database deployment pipeline from YAML to the classic release pipeline within Azure DevOps. While the YAML pipeline was effective, the shift to the classic release pipeline was driven by an initiative to align our branching and release strategy with other teams in the company, enabling us to “build once, deploy multiple times.”
One of the initial challenges encountered in this transition was configuring the pipeline to utilise self-hosted agents provided by our DevOps team. In the YAML pipeline, integrating these agents was straightforward; I simply retrieved the agent’s name from our DevOps team and incorporated it into the YAML script.
name: AZURE_SQL_DEPLOYMENT
pool: "name-of-self-hosted-agent"However, the process proved to be less intuitive when working with the classic release pipeline interface.
Upon investigation, I realised that the dropdown menu for agent selection in the classic release pipeline was limited, displaying only predefined options.
Perplexed by this limitation, I reached out to our DevOps team for clarification. It was then brought to my attention that unlike YAML pipelines, classic release pipelines require the user to be assigned to the Release Administrators group in Azure DevOps in order to access and select self-hosted agents.
To grant access to Release Administrators, I navigated to Project Settings > Permissions > Release Administrators.
Taking this insight into account, I promptly ensured that the necessary permissions were granted to my account. As expected, it took a few moments for the changes to take effect. However, once my account was added to the Release Administrators group, the self-hosted agents seamlessly appeared in the dropdown menu within the classic release pipeline interface.
