Question: Safest way to manually clean the build agent's work folder

Have you tried trouble shooting?

Trouble shooting doc

Agent Version and Platform

Mainly 1.95.3 but also 2.123.0

Windows Server 2012 / Windows Server 2016

VSTS Type and Version

On-Prem TFS Tfs2015 Update3

What’s not working?

This is more a question. We run on-prem TFS2015 agent with the old 1.95.3 agent and have a LOT of repositories. We haven’t found any way to do global retention settings on the build agents, so the disk fills up over time. Until know we have recycled the build servers themselves now and then, but sometimes we need to do manual cleanup on the agents themselves. I’m just wondering what is the safest way to manually clean out the agents of old builds? Is it OK to delete stuff under _work, or does folders like _tasks need to be handles with care?

We are also running a few agents in the old VSTS (now AzureDevOps I guess) on version 2.123.0, can the same cleanup strategy be used here in a pinch?

[TingluoHuang]

@andmos here is what i would suggest:

1. rename the current _work to _work_bk (you can delete the entire _work folder, but backup the current work folder just in case).
2. queue definitions that you really need them to work to the agent, the agent should should recreate the entire _work folder for you.
3. if everything works fine, you can just delete _work_bk folder created in step 1.

[jawn]

@jklemmack For Me: Organization Settings -> Agent Pools -> Select Your Agent Pool -> Settings

FYI, this is what the Maintenance job UI looks like