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Setup the Testing Agent

The Testing Agent is a micro-application that runs on your desktop, private network or CI environment. It ensures you can reach clusters that your host has access to securely and with isolation.

  • If you started Conduktor via Docker, the installation is bundled with an embedded agent
  • If you are using Conduktor Cloud, you must setup the Testing Agent to get started

Agent Setup​

tip

The Testing Agent can be installed and used on GNU/Linux, macOS, FreeBSD, and Windows. You can install it:

  • In a container
  • By downloading a binary manually

From within the Conduktor Testing UI, navigate to the Agents tab. Note you may need to create a Workspace first.

Provide a Name to identify your agent, and confirm whether it will be personal, organisational, or used in your CI/CD environment.

  • Personal Agent: For running locally on your own machine or server.
  • Organisation Agent: For running inside a company server or network.
  • CI Agent: You will use this token for executing tests in CI/CD jobs. Note this is only relevant when you have already created meaningful tests, and want to automate their execution.

Select Create to generate the commands for downloading and running your Agent.

Run the Testing Agent​

Select the relevant OS for running your Agent. You will be provided commands for downloading and running the Agent on:

  • MacOS
  • Linux
  • Windows
  • Docker

tip

A token can be used by multiple agents, allowing it to scale horizontally. However when running agents in different locations, or with different access or different resources, you should create separate tokens.

Download the Token​

danger

You will only be shown the token once, so it's recommended you Download the token and store it somewhere secure.

Validate the Connection​

After executing the commands, you should see Agent connected! in the logs.

info

If you observe an error regarding the Java Runtime (class file version 55.0), please download a more recent version of Java. The Agent supports Java 11+.

Assuming setup was successful, you will see the green Connection is successful! message within the Conduktor Testing UI.

Ensure that your newly created Agent is selected in the left-hand navigation menu.

Now you have the Testing Agent installed, you will be able to reach clusters that your host has access to within the Testing application. Continue to connecting a Kafka cluster.

Binary Installation ​

Java 11+ is required for running the Testing Agent. If you do not meet these requirements, please download a more recent Java version.

Download the Conduktor Testing Agent​

Then, Run the below command via command line, populating the token parameter with your newly generated token.

java -jar conduktor-testing-agent-*.jar --token=<TOKEN>
tip

Using a proxy? You can inherit the configuration from your system by using :

java -Djava.net.useSystemProxies=true -jar ...

Container installation​

info

Using Docker introduces complexity when trying to reach clusters on localhost or reference certificates on your local file system. For these use cases, we recommend using the binary distribution.

Container image: ghcr.io/conduktor/testing-agent:latest

You will need to provide the agent token as well, through the TOKEN environment variable

Run with Docker:

docker run -e TOKEN=<TOKEN> -d ghcr.io/conduktor/testing-agent:latest

Run with Docker Compose:

# docker-compose.yaml

services:
  testing-agent:
    image: ghcr.io/conduktor/testing-agent:latest
    environment:
      TOKEN: <TOKEN>

Using with self-hosted platforms​

To allow external agents and CI runners to reach your on-premise platform, you will need to expose the 7010 TCP port on the platform.

The agent will initiate a connection using GRPC.

Your platform needs to be reachable from the system running the agent. Make sure to setup your network accordingly.

You can then configure your agent/CI runner with the following environment variables:

  • PFM_HOST : the IP/domain of your platform
  • PFM_PORT : the port mapped to the 7010 internal port of your platform
  • PFM_USE_SSL : true if you are using SSL, false otherwise

Alternatively, you can use the --host=XX, --port=XX and --use-ssl=XX command line arguments.

Running in your CI/CD Environment ​

The Testing Agent is a long-running process, and should not be used in a CI pipeline.

For CI workflows, please read our dedicated documentation.