5.3 Allowed Agents

Orbnetes deployment and release orchestration documentation for operators and platform teams.

Allowed Agents defines which global agents a project can use.

Why this exists:

  • Agents are typically global inventory objects, but project access must be controlled.
  • Not every project should be able to execute on every host class.
  • This creates a clean security and routing boundary without duplicating agents.

How it works operationally:

  • Project selects a subset of agents.
  • Jobs still require tag match, but only within project-allowed agents.
  • If no allowed agent can satisfy tags, jobs remain queued.

Common misconfiguration pattern:

  • Agent is online, tag matches, but agent not assigned to project -> job never starts.

Best practices:

  • Assign least required agent set per project.
  • Segment sensitive runners (production) from shared utility runners.
  • Keep tag taxonomy consistent across allowed agent pools.