Activate Parallel Jobs

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Activate Parallel Jobs

Lesron Scott 0

Hello Support,

We would like to request an increase in our Azure DevOps parallel jobs allocation. Our team currently requires access to additional parallel jobs to support our build and deployment workloads.

Specifically, we are requesting a total of 6 parallel jobs to accommodate our operational requirements and improve pipeline execution efficiency.

Please advise on the process, licensing requirements, or any additional information needed to complete this request.

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Answer 1

Hi @Lesron Scott ,

You can definitely increase your Azure DevOps parallel jobs allocation, but the exact “process” depends on whether you need Microsoft-hosted parallel jobs, self-hosted concurrent jobs, or (optionally) other agent types.

When your pipeline runs, each actively running job consumes one parallel job (i.e., a slot on an agent). If you don’t have enough, additional jobs get queued until slots are available.

Prerequisites before buying more:

To purchase/adjust parallel jobs, you need:

Billing set up for your Azure DevOps organization
Proper permissions (you must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators security group)

How to request/buy more parallel jobs to reach 6?

If you’re missing free hosted parallelism (common for new orgs)

If you’re seeing an error like “No hosted parallelism has been purchased or granted”, the free tier for new orgs may require a request via the form/process mentioned in the docs/blog. Turnaround is typically a few business days.

If you need to purchase additional parallel jobs

If your goal is 6 parallel jobs total, you’ll need to purchase more Microsoft-hosted parallel jobs for the organization (or appropriate type for your agent setup). The docs walk through purchasing in the “Configure and pay for parallel jobs” guidance.

Tip: If you already purchased extra but still can’t run as many jobs in parallel as expected, it’s because a purchased parallel job count doesn’t stack into “more than you bought.” To run two jobs in parallel, you generally need two parallel job slots available.

If your jobs are still queued

Even after increasing parallel jobs, jobs may remain queued if there are other bottlenecks (agent availability, limits, queue conditions, demands not matching agent capabilities, approval steps, etc.). The troubleshooting guide includes a section specifically for parallel job limits / no available agents / hit your free limits.

References:

Hope this helps!

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Answer 2

To increase Azure DevOps parallel jobs to a total of 6, perform the following steps and ensure prerequisites are met.

Prerequisites

Billing must be set up for the Azure DevOps organization.
The requester must be a member of the Project Collection Administrators group.

Process to buy or change parallel jobs

Sign in to the Azure DevOps organization:
- https://dev.azure.com/{yourorganization}
Open Organization settings (gear icon).
Under Pipelines, select Parallel jobs.
For Microsoft-hosted or self-hosted jobs (depending on which is needed):
- Select Purchase parallel jobs or Change.
Enter the desired total quantity of parallel jobs (for example, 6) and select Save.
Allow up to 30 minutes for the new parallel job capacity to become active.

Notes and licensing behavior

Parallel jobs are purchased at the organization level and shared by all projects.
For Microsoft-hosted jobs:
- Public projects can receive up to 10 free Microsoft-hosted parallel jobs with no monthly time limit.
- Private projects receive one free Microsoft-hosted job with 30 hours per month; paid jobs remove the monthly time limit and allow each job to run up to 360 minutes per execution.
For self-hosted jobs:
- Azure DevOps Services provides one free self-hosted parallel job with unlimited minutes.
- Additional self-hosted parallel jobs are billed as a fixed monthly cost based on the number of purchased jobs.
When purchasing Microsoft-hosted parallel jobs from the free tier, the first purchased job removes time limits on the first job; to run six jobs concurrently, configure the total count to six.

Capacity planning guidance

A simple rule of thumb is one parallel job for every four to five users.
Multiple teams, multiple active CI branches, or multiple applications deployed in parallel may each justify additional parallel jobs.

If more than 6 concurrent jobs are needed in the future, repeat the same steps in Organization settings → Pipelines → Parallel jobs and increase the quantity.

References:

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Activate Parallel Jobs

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