Cloud agent provisioning (EC2, Azure) in Jenkins - Cheat Sheet & Quick Revision

Recall & Review

beginner

What is a cloud agent in Jenkins?

A cloud agent in Jenkins is a virtual machine or container that Jenkins provisions dynamically in the cloud (like EC2 or Azure) to run build jobs. It helps scale build capacity on demand.

beginner

Name two popular cloud providers Jenkins can provision agents from.

Amazon EC2 (Elastic Compute Cloud) and Microsoft Azure are two popular cloud providers Jenkins can use to provision agents dynamically.

intermediate

What Jenkins plugin is commonly used to provision EC2 agents?

The 'Amazon EC2 Plugin' is commonly used in Jenkins to provision EC2 instances as build agents automatically.

intermediate

How does Jenkins authenticate to Azure to provision agents?

Jenkins uses Azure service principal credentials (client ID, secret, tenant ID) to authenticate and provision Azure virtual machines as agents.

beginner

Why use cloud agent provisioning instead of static agents?

Cloud agent provisioning allows Jenkins to create agents only when needed, saving costs and resources by not running idle machines all the time.

Which Jenkins plugin helps provision EC2 instances as build agents?

A Amazon EC2 Plugin

B Azure VM Agents Plugin

C Docker Plugin

D Kubernetes Plugin

The Amazon EC2 Plugin is designed specifically to provision EC2 instances as Jenkins agents.

What credentials does Jenkins need to provision Azure agents?

A SSH key only

B AWS access key and secret

C GitHub personal access token

D Azure service principal credentials

Jenkins uses Azure service principal credentials (client ID, secret, tenant ID) to authenticate and create Azure VMs.

What is a key benefit of using cloud agent provisioning in Jenkins?

A Agents run only when needed, saving cost

B Agents never need updates

C Agents are always offline

D Agents use physical hardware only

Cloud agents are created on demand, so you pay only for what you use.

Which cloud provider is NOT typically used for Jenkins cloud agents?

A Amazon EC2

B Microsoft Azure

C Local desktop

D Google Cloud Platform

Local desktops are not cloud providers and are not used for dynamic cloud agent provisioning.

What is the first step to enable EC2 agent provisioning in Jenkins?

A Create a Jenkins pipeline

B Install the Amazon EC2 Plugin

C Write a Dockerfile

D Configure GitHub webhook

You must install the Amazon EC2 Plugin to enable EC2 agent provisioning.

Explain how Jenkins provisions a cloud agent on EC2.

Think about the plugin, authentication, instance launch, and lifecycle.

Describe the steps to configure Jenkins to provision agents on Azure.

Focus on authentication, plugin, and VM template setup.