Azure DevOps - More Than One Build Agent?

My organisation is using the cloud hosted version of Azure DevOps. We are currently working on building out our CI\CD pipelines. We are trying to speed up the build process by using parallel jobs. I can see from the link below that for private projects, we should be allowed One free parallel job that can run for up to 60 minutes each time and a total of 1800 free minutes per month: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/devops/pipelines/licensing/concurrent-jobs?view=azure-devops&tabs=ms-hosted

Currently when we run two jobs at the same time they are queued up one after the other rather than in parallel. I believe the issue is that there is only one Microsoft Hosted Build Agent in the Agent Pool. We would much prefer to get a second Microsoft Hosted Build Agent rather than provisioning a self hosted build agent ourselves. Can you get a second Microsoft Hosted Build Agent?

I have used the Microsoft Form referenced in the link above to request an increase in the allowance.

Thanks,

Stephen Mulryan

I tried looking at the Azure DevOps settings but there was no way of adding an additional build agent to the existing agent pool.

For a private project, you can have only one free job. If the free tier is no longer sufficient, you can pay for additional capacity per parallel job. When you purchase your first Microsoft-hosted parallel job, the number of parallel jobs you have in the organization is still one. To be able to run two jobs concurrently, you'll need to purchase two parallel jobs if you're currently on the free tier. The first purchase only removes the time limits on the first job.

To purchase parallel jobs, the following prerequisites need to be met:

• Set up billing for your organization.
• You need to be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group.

Go to Organization settings -> Parallel jobs under Pipelines. Change the number of Microsoft-hosted parallel jobs.