Install Azure DevOps Test Agent in Azure Function App / Azure Container Instances to leverage sliced testing

Question

I have been working on a requirement to run the automated tests (Test Plans/ Test Suites) in a test agent -

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Requirements -

• Leverage test slicing for Visual Studio automated tests with hosted azure containers

• Run them on hosted cloud agents (Serverless/ACI or any) - since our tests access on-prem servers to execute tests, Express route has been configured and successful network has been established.

Options Tried

1. Tried with Setting up test agent on window container on-prem and locally -it worked fine, when I deploy the windows container test agent to ACI onto an existing VNET - I get the error -

Az Container create --- {{ to Existing Vnet }}

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2. Tried the same above approach on Linux container(locally) - Unfortunately "Visual Studio Test Task is not supported" to run our automated tests. Hence felt no point of deploying Linux container agent image to ACI

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Does Azuredevops support running automated tests from test plans on Linux/Ubuntu agent

3. Tried with function app - with ACR container image (which has test agent running) unfortunately its not supported for Windows containers to deploy on existing VNET

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Every step that I took led me nowhere. Since we are planning to migrate all of our infra to Azure, our only solution is to run the tests on Cloud!

Is there a better way to run tests in hosted cloud to reduce time/cost?

Note - The only option I see is to to have a VM in existing Hybrid VNET or AKS in Hybrid VNet and run the test process in it.

• Cece Dong - MSFT: Regarding Azure DevOps Agents on Azure Container Instances (ACI), this documentation provides details explanation: devblogs.microsoft.com/devops/…. But Windows Container doesn't support to deploy on VNET, it seems deploy Azure DevOps Agents on a VM is a good choice.
• Cece Dong - MSFT: Is the following reply helpful?

Answer 1

Azure ACI does not support Windows Container in VNet, here you can see it:

Currently, only Linux containers are supported in a container group deployed to a virtual network.

So ACI is not available for you when you want to deploy the image to the VNet. And the options you find are the only two solutions while the containers need to access the on-prem servers. Compare with the single VM, the AKS cluster will cost more, so I recommend you use the single VM.

• Abraham Dhanyaraju Arumbaka: Thank you @Charles, We have plenty of tests which needs to load balanced across multiple VM's - does VM scale set helps? How about installing test agent process in Function app?
• Charles Xu: @user2153844 VM scale set only help you to balance the traffic, not multiple tests in different instance. If you have multiple different tests with different images, then the AKS is more suitable. What do you mean by Function app?
• Abraham Dhanyaraju Arumbaka: Thank you - Can we install test agent in azure.microsoft.com/en-in/services/functions ? does it support?
• Charles Xu: @user2153844 Of course, you can use the docker image to deploy the function app. But it seems it only supports the Linux Container.
• Abraham Dhanyaraju Arumbaka: Unfortunately VS Test task is not supported to run on linux agents. :( stackoverflow.com/questions/58604756/…