CloudBees CI Provisioning of new agents blocked due to the configured limit.

Last Reviewed:2025-06-04()
1 minute readKnowledge base

Issue

  • We’ve observed that the builds are not progressing properly due to shared or ephemeral agents not being provisioned by the controller.

  • We have found one of the following messages in the Jenkins logs:

Blocking provisioning additional nodes due to instance provisioning node limits

or

Blocking provisioning additional nodes due to instance provisioning executors limits

Resolution

The log message indicates that the controller is hitting either the executor or node limits. The limit can be easily adjusted in Manage Jenkins -> System -> Provisioning limits

SCR 20250604 jwhv

We may need to adjust those limits if necessary.

Additionally, there is a System variable called limitExecutorsIncludingOffline that can change the above behavior.

  • If we have this variable set to true, the counter will count the executors for the agents on-line and the agents off-line.

  • If we have this variable set to false, the counter will only count the executors for the agents on-line.

So, if it seems like your instance is hitting its limits even without many agents connected, it’s possible that the mentioned variable is set to true , causing offline agents to be included in the count. In that case, you’ll need to update the value of the system variable.