Can jenkins slave connect to multiple servers?

Question

We have several parallel development groups working on different things in separate environments. Each group has a jenkins server/2 windows slaves setup that is executing selenium nunit tests.

Is it possible to to have all the slave instances in a pool that each of the jenkins servers can pick from? We are using the JNLP b/c there are issues with some of the browser tests that require running in an interactive desktop. I thought perhaps I could start a JNLP for each server instance on each machine, but that seemed the wrong way as each server would have no knowledge of other servers use of it. Is there any way to make a slave available to multiple servers?

Answer 1

I don't think you can do what you are looking for.

You can run multiple slaves on one computer, but as you said, there is no way to keep multiple servers from trying to access the same desktop.

A better solution is probably to combine your Jenkins servers. You can use the security settings and views to set it so that regular users are not even aware of the other projects being run in parallel- while allowing one Jenkins server to coordinate all of the builds (which is what you want).

Answer 2

You may want to check with CloudBees Ops Center ( http://www.cloudbees.com/joc ), in particular, the Share Executors (Slaves) Between Masters feature. That would do exactly what you want, but for a bit of a price.