Multiple TeamCity Build Agents on one Server

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Multiple TeamCity Build Agents on one Server

20 July 2010 by handcraftsman

How to get multiple TeamCity build agents running on one server.

First log in to the server where you want the agents to run then open TeamCity from a browser on that box.

Go to the Agents tab.

From the top right of the page choose Install Build Agents then MS Windows Installer.

When prompted choose to run the agent installer. You may have to be an administrator since this will be installing windows services.

Choose the directory where you want the agent configuration and working directories to live. I put them under the TeamCity home directory.

Take the defaults as you work your way through the installer.

The agent directory is being configured.

Here it is important that you choose a unique name and port. The directories should be consistent with your previous choices. You may need to change the server URL and port.

When this popup appears do not click OK yet.

Open an Explorer window and navigate the the launcher/conf directory under the build agent directory you configured above.

Edit wrapper.conf and change the name of the ntservice to match your agent name as appropriate. This is important because each agent runs under a different service and they must have unique names, otherwise only one will connect at a time.

Now you can click OK on the popup.

And choose the defaults the rest of the way through the installer.

If you open Services

You should see the service you named.

The new agent should connect and be visible from the TeamCity Agents page within a few moments.

Repeat the steps to add additional agents.

15 Responses

on 23 December 2010 at 3:39 pm | Reply Michael Ottati

Thank you for posting this. When I installed a second agent on my TC server it clobbered the first one.

Your post saved me considerable time figuring out where the service was defined. It seems like a bug that the build agent installer does not detect this though.

Thanks again.
on 2 February 2011 at 5:41 pm | Reply Chris Spargo

THANKS for this. I suspected something like it, but your post confirmed my suspicions and saved me finding the workaround.
on 23 March 2012 at 11:18 am | Reply Santhosh Nair

Thank you.
Editing wrapper.conf is tricky.
on 19 June 2012 at 10:48 am | Reply Brent

Never would have figured it out without this post. Thanks!
on 20 June 2012 at 10:39 am | Reply Len Wsner

Thank you so much! This saved me a lot of grief.
on 29 June 2012 at 3:36 am | Reply Dhanu

thanks for the guide…
on 15 August 2012 at 5:36 am | Reply Dan

This is great but I guess installing the extra agent still knocks the counter down from the 3 that comes with Team City
on 5 December 2012 at 5:38 pm | Reply Dirk

Worked perfect! Thanks for the details.
on 2 May 2013 at 6:05 am | Reply Rohit

Thank you for this post. But after installing the agent, do I need to run agent.bat file available under build agent\bin folder ??
on 9 March 2015 at 4:45 am | Reply ApriStar

Thanks for this wonderful share, it works well
on 23 April 2015 at 5:10 am | Reply Conrad

Thanks, great article, saved me hours more pain, after the hours I already spent trying to figure this out myself 🙂
on 28 August 2015 at 7:05 pm | Reply Alan

nice post. I figured out the issue while writing this into a DSC module, then saw this post. could have saved a few minutes, but…. it’s good to see I wasn’t off track: note, you don’t have to change the description, even though TC article recommends it.
on 10 March 2016 at 4:44 pm | Reply jquintus

6 years later, and this post is still super helpful. Thanks.
on 30 September 2016 at 11:02 am | Reply Timje

Yep awesome post thanks! Just used it for TeamCity 10 and still relevant.
on 13 October 2016 at 5:31 pm | Reply dragon788

Thanks for the awesome post. It appears somebody was able to take this knowledge and apply it to create a TeamCity Agent Chocolatey package. This is much nicer than using the .msi because then you can avoid the weirdness of having it installed multiple times but only showing up once in the Programs and Features.

The main thing it’s missing is the ability to set the service account to run as, but that can be changed fairly easily with a little scripting after the fact.

https://chocolatey.org/packages/TeamCityAgent