Restricting agents

You can restrict which agents are available to a specific project or environment. This is useful if you have multiple agents and want to ensure that an agent is only available to specific projects. You can also ensure that only specific environments are allowed to use agents, thus preventing access within a project to any user who doesn't have access to that environment.

An unrestricted agent (the default state when an agent is created) can always be used by any project or environment. A restricted agent can only be used by the projects and environments you specify. If you restrict an agent but don't specify any projects, the agent won't be accessible to any project.

Note

At this moment, these restrictions work in relation to the Designer UI only, but will be extended to runtime in a future release.

In addition to the process described below, you can also restrict agents using the Manage Agents API endpoint.

How to restrict agents

Note

You can restrict an agent regardless of its current status (Running, Stopped, etc.).

In the left navigation, click the Agents & Instances icon . Then, select Agents from the menu.
Locate the agent you want to restrict and click the agent's name to open the agent details page.
Click the Allow List tab.
Click the Restrict agent toggle to enable restrictions. This will reveal the list of projects that can use the agent, along with the number of environments in each project that can use the agent ("All environments", "1 environment", "2 environments", etc.).
Click Manage next to the Projects heading. This will open the Manage projects dialog.
The Manage projects dialog lists all the projects in your Data Productivity Cloud account. To allow a project to use the agent, click the project name and then click the right-arrow button. This will move the project to the Allowed projects list on the right. You can use the left-arrow button to remove a project from the Allowed projects list.
Click Save to save your changes and close the dialog.

By default, every environment in an allowed project can use the agent. If you want to further restrict the agent to a specific environment or set of environments within the project:

Click environments next to the project name (it may say "All environments", "1 environment", "2 environments", etc.). This will open the Manage environments dialog.
The Manage environments dialog lists all the environments used by the project. To allow an environment to use the agent, click the environment name and then click the right-arrow button. This will move the environment to the Allowed environments list on the right. You can use the left-arrow button to remove an environment from the Allowed environments list.

Reserving an environment name

If an environment doesn't yet exist but you want to ensure that when it's created it can use the agent, you can use the Reserve environment function to specify the name of the environment that you plan to create. To do this:

Click the three dots ... to the right of the project you want to reserve an environment for.
Click + Reserve environment. This will open the Reserve Environment dialog.
In the Environment name field, enter the name of the environment you plan to create.
Click Reserve to reserve the name and close the dialog. The reserved environment name will be added to the Allowed environments list for the project, with "(reserved)" next to its name.

You can repeat this process to reserve multiple environment names for the project.

Note

This action doesn't create the environment. When an environment with this exact name is subsequently created in the project, this agent will be available for selection by that environment.

When you reserve an environment name for the agent, it automatically restricts the agent to only that environment, even though it doesn't yet exist, which means no other environments can use it unless you explicitly add them to the Allowed environments list.

To remove a reserved environment, click the environment name in the Allowed environments list and then click the left-arrow button to move it to the list on the left. This will remove the reservation, and it will no longer appear in either list of the dialog.

Turning off agent restrictions

If you switch the Restrict agent toggle off, the agent will be made available to every project and environment. The list of allowed projects, environments, and reserved environments will be saved, however, so if you later re-enable the Restrict agent toggle, the previous restrictions will be restored.

Using the restricted agent

In an environment

When you create an environment within a project, one of the decisions you need to make is which agent the environment will use. For details of how to create an environment, read Environments.

The environment's Agent drop-down will only display those agents that are unrestricted or that are restricted to the environment that is being created.

In a schedule

When you create a schedule, one of the decisions you need to make is which agent the scheduled pipelines will use. For details of how to create a schedule, read Schedules.

The schedule's Agent drop-down will only display those agents that are unrestricted or that are restricted to the project and environment that the schedule is being created in.

If you restrict an agent so that it's no longer available to a project that already uses it in a schedule, the schedule will continue to use the agent. However, no new schedules subsequently added to the project will be able to use that agent.