Central Build Farm Workflow

Understand the Central Build Farm Workflow

Harness Central Build Farm Setup configures the core components required for Harness CI: build infrastructure, container registry, and source code manager. A centralized build farm reduces Kubernetes cluster ownership costs and simplifies operations by consolidating CI workloads into a single, autoscaling cluster.

Before you begin

• HSF is deployed and post-deployment configuration is complete.

• You know which build infrastructure type you want to use

• If using self-hosted Kubernetes infrastructure: a delegate is already deployed with access to your Kubernetes cluster.

• If using Harness Cloud with enterprise: a Secure Connect proxy is configured.

• You have been added to the HSF Users or HSF Admins group.

Inputs

Input	Description	Notes
Build infrastructure type	Self-hosted Kubernetes, Harness Cloud, or both	Detailed in Step 1 below
Container registry URL	The URL of your container registry	e.g. registry.example.com
Source code manager	Your SCM type and URL	e.g. GitHub, GitLab, Bitbucket
Validation repository	A repo Harness can use to test the SCM connection	Must be accessible by the connector

Steps

1. Choose your infrastructure

Before executing the workflow, decide which build infrastructure type your team will use:

Option	When to use
Harness Cloud	You want Harness to manage build infrastructure. No Kubernetes connector is created.
Self-hosted Kubernetes	You want builds to run on your own cluster. A delegate with cluster access must already be deployed.
Both	You want to support both options and choose per pipeline.

If you select Harness Cloud, the workflow will not create a Kubernetes connector for the build farm. Cloud infrastructure is managed by Harness directly and requires no connector.

If you are using enterprise with Harness Cloud, you will need a Secure Connect proxy configured before running this workflow. If you are using enterprise with self-hosted infrastructure, your delegate must already be deployed and have access to your cluster.

2. Execute the workflow

Fill in the inputs above. Once submitted, HSF will provision the harness-central-build-farm-setup IaCM workspace in the Solutions Factory project.

What gets created

Resource	Details
Code repository connector	Connects Harness to your SCM
Artifact manager connector	Connects Harness to your container registry
Build infrastructure connector	Connects to your Kubernetes cluster (self-hosted only)
Secret: build_farm_container_registry_password	Container registry password
Secret: build_farm_container_registry_username	Container registry username
Secret: build_farm_scm_password	SCM password
Secret: build_farm_scm_username	SCM username
IaCM workspace	harness-central-build-farm-setup in Solutions Factory project

Credentials are stored as Harness secrets rather than hardcoded into the workspace state. This means they can be rotated independently without affecting the workspace configuration.

Expected output

After the workflow completes:

• Connectors are visible under Solutions Factory → Project Settings → Connectors.

• Secrets are visible under Solutions Factory → Project Settings → Secrets.

• The harness-central-build-farm-setup workspace appears in IaCM → Workspaces.

• An IDP catalog entry for the workspace is registered automatically.

Post setup

Once the build farm is provisioned, update HSF to use it as the execution infrastructure for Solutions Factory pipelines:

Update the Harness Pilot Light workspace:

1. Navigate to IaCM → Workspaces → Harness Pilot Light.

2. Under Variables → OpenTofu Variables, change kubernetes_connector from skipped to account.buildfarm_infrastructure.

3. Save the variable.

4. Run Manage Pilot Light to apply the change.

Update the Harness Solutions Factory workspace:

1. Navigate to IaCM → Workspaces → Harness Solutions Factory.

2. Under Variables → OpenTofu Variables, change kubernetes_connector from skipped to account.buildfarm_infrastructure.

3. Save the variable.

4. Run Deploy Solutions Factory to apply the change.

After both updates, all Solutions Factory pipelines will execute using your build infrastructure.

Making changes

To update the build farm configuration after provisioning, for example to change the container registry URL or swap your SCM, navigate to IaCM → Workspaces → harness-central-build-farm-setup, update the relevant variable, and re-execute the workspace. The change will go through the approval flow before being applied.