This new feature allows for dynamic deployment of agents within an organization's VNET, with the ability to use custom images or the latest images provided by Microsoft. It also enables defining any SKU/disk and scheduling provisioning states.
The presentation points out the current issues with Azure Pipelines Agents and how they are addressed by the Managed DevOps Pool. Challenges such as the management of Self-hosted, Microsoft-hosted, and VMSS Agents, scaling within license limits, restrictions on using old environments or high-performance VMs, and the difficulty of creating images are discussed.
As a solution, the Managed DevOps Pool offers dynamic deployment of agents to an organization's VNET, use of custom or latest Microsoft images, definition of any SKU/disk, scheduling of provisioning states, and support for long-duration pipeline executions spanning several days.
It also covers the necessary preparations before using the Managed DevOps Pool, including creating a Dev Center/Project, creating the deployment target Subnet and MSI (with necessary network roles), the need for Outbound, and registering the Resource Provider.
The presentation mentions the management of security and costs for the Managed DevOps Pool, explaining that by default, all projects under the connected organization are accessible, but setting it to reference only specified projects during setup can help apportion security and costs.
Additionally, it touches on the pricing of the Managed DevOps Pool, which is the same as the calculation for self-hosted agents, offering one free slot plus billing based on the number of parallels.
Finally, it addresses scenarios currently not supported, such as multi-tenant scenarios, use of Azure Compute Gallery only within one's tenant, and the inability to use Direct Share (sharing specified to a tenant).
This summary covers the key points of the presentation, but for more details, please refer to the slides of the presentation or the official documentation.