What type of agent can I set up quickly to execute flow runs on a remote machine (e.g. public cloud)?

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1

It’s hard to give a clear single answer since it depends on what infrastructure and cloud provider your company/team is using. All agents are straightforward to set up and can be started using the command prefect agent TYPE start --label YOUR_LABEL -k YOUR_API_KEY , where TYPE indicates one of the agent types:

  • local
  • docker
  • kubernetes
  • ecs
  • vertex.

You could e.g. spin up a small AWS EC2 instance with a local or docker agent to get started.

We also provide ready-made Azure resources to make it easier to deploy docker and kubernetes agents for Prefect Cloud users.

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Also, if you want to set up an agent for a hobby project in a low-cost way:

  • All cloud providers offer a free tier and with AWS you get it for 12 months. You could e.g. use it to run a small EC2 instance with a local or docker agent entirely for free.
  • One community user used replit.com for a hobby project hosting ECS agent.
  • This blog post shows how to set up an agent on ECS, and ECS costs are rather low because you pay for only one container running your agent 24/7 rather than for an entire instance, and as long as you are on a free tier, this should cost you nothing.
3

@anna_geller Is there an answer to this question for Prefect 2.0?
I do not find much in the docu about how to start fast an agent remotely. Optimally it would listen to a Deployment in Prefect Cloud

4

Check out this simple recipe:

You can spin up your agent with a single click from GitHub Actions