You have an Azure pipeline that is used to build and deploy an app named App1. The build job uses a Microsoft-hosted Windows agent.
The build job for App1 intermittently returns a timeout error.
You need to ensure that the build job completes successfully. The solution must minimize administrative effort.
What should you do?
The build job intermittently returning a timeout error is likely due to resource constraints on the shared Microsoft-hosted agents. By purchasing more parallel jobs, additional resources are provided for the build job, thus reducing the likelihood of timeouts. This solution is the simplest and quickest, requiring no configuration changes or the setup of a self-hosted agent, which aligns with the goal of minimizing administrative effort.
Selected Answer is D. Purchase more parallel jobs. Here's why: Minimizes administrative effort: Purchasing more parallel jobs is the simplest and quickest solution, requiring no configuration changes or agent setup. Addresses the timeout issue: The timeout errors likely occur due to resource constraints on the shared Microsoft-hosted agents. More parallel jobs provide additional resources for the build job, reducing the likelihood of timeouts
For private projects there is one free Microsoft-hosted agent which can run jobs up to 60 minutes each time. You can pay for additional parallel jobs which have 360 minutes as the hard limit. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/agents/hosted?view=azure-devops&tabs=yaml
Self-hosted agents also solve the problem, but 'the solution must minimize administrative effort'.
Minimize Administrative effort
Purchase more
All MS-Hosted (parallel) jobs will timeout at 360 minutes. Although this appears to be the least administrative effort, there's still a timeout of 360m. Having to go back after a second timeout of 360m, then deploy a self-hosted agent would be more effort. The only way to entirely eliminate the variable of timeout is to use a self-hosted agent.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/troubleshooting/troubleshooting?view=azure-devops#job-time-out
I’ll go for B (self hosted agent) becaute it allows to set a timeout of rule out any timeout issues due to the agent. As indicated in MS Documentation in the reference below: “To increase the max timeout for a job, you can opt for any of the following. Buy a Microsoft hosted agent which will give you 360 minutes for all jobs, irrespective of the repository used Use a self-hosted agent to rule out any timeout issues due to the agent” Ref: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/troubleshooting/troubleshooting?view=azure-devops#job-time-out
Purchasing more parallel jobs allows you to leverage additional Microsoft-hosted agents within the same pool. This increases the available resources for your build job, potentially reducing queuing time and timeouts.
Minimize administrative effort
This is very odd question, because none of the provided answers will solve the timeout problem with the job. The thing which could realy fix this is 'timeoutInMinutes' property of the job.
Ill go with D, because ist said "The solution must minimize administrative effort."