VM build executors are OCI VM Compute instances dedicated to run builds of jobs, which your organization’s members define in VB Studio projects.

A VM executor is always associated with a build executor template. When your organization's members create jobs, they simply associate the appropriate executor template with the job. When the job's build triggers, the VM executor that's associated with the executor template starts automatically. Oracle charges you only when a VM executor is active, runs a build, or is preparing itself to run a build.

This table describes the different states of a VM executor:

Some key points to remember about VM executors:

• After creating a VB Studio instance, VB Studio creates a VM executor when you create your first project (assuming you don’t already have one). The VM executor is associated with the System Default OL7 for Visual Builder executor template in the connected OCI account.
• When you add a VM executor manually, you must specify the executor template, choose an OCI region from the connected OCI account's subscribed regions, specify the OCI Compute VM's shape, and select the VCN (optional).
• Your OCI account may have some Compute instance limits set. When you add a VM executor, VB Studio looks into the specified OCI region's Availability Domains, finds available OCPUs with the specified shape, calculates the number of Compute instances, and displays the number of Compute VM instances you can add from your OCI account's set limit.

  Here's an example of the VB Studio's Add VM Build Executors dialog box that displays the number of VM executors you can add with the VM.Standard.E2.1 shape:

  
  

  

  
  
• When you add a VM executor, it is added in the Pending state and doesn't cost you anything. You can add more VM executors than the number of available Compute VM instances.

  Remember, VB Studio creates a Compute VM instance when a VM executor starts, not when you add it.

• You can add standard and legacy VM shapes with these series:
  • VM.Standard1
  • VM.Standard2
  • VM.Standard.E2
  • VM.Standard3.Flex
  • VM.Standard.E3.Flex
  • VM.Standard.E4.Flex
  • VM.Standard.E5.Flex
  • VM.Standard.B1
  • VM.Standard.Intel.Generic
  • VM.Standard.x86.Generic
  • VM.Standard.AMD.Generic

  For more details about the above shapes, see Standard shapes and Legacy shapes.

• A VM executor can run one build at a time.
• When a job's build runs, if VB Studio finds multiple VM executors allocated for the job's executor template, it runs the build on any one of them. You can't choose or specify a particular VM executor to use for the build.
• If you expect your organization's members to run parallel builds of jobs that refer to a common executor template, add multiple VM executors for that executor template. If you're not sure, you can start with one VM executor and add more VM executors later.
• While adding multiple VM executors that reference a common executor template:
  • Add all VM executors in the same VCN. If you add VM executors with a common executor template in different VCNs (such as some VM executors in the default VCN and other VM executors in a custom VCN), your builds might behave unpredictably.
  • Add all VM executors with the same shape. If you add VM executors with different shapes (such as some VM executors of the VM.Standard1.1 shape and some of the VM.Standard2.8 shape), your builds may run slow or fast depending on the VM executor it runs on.
• After a build is complete, a VM executor continues to be in the Available state and waits for some time for any queued builds. This wait time is called sleep timeout. If no builds run on the VM executors in this duration, VB Studio automatically stops the VM executors.
• The more VM executors you have running at a specific time, the higher the cost. To minimize the higher cost, configure the sleep timeout to stop inactive VM executors after some time. The sleep timeout setting applies to all your organization's VM executors.