There are three tabs in build grid screen:

1. Active nodes
   Active nodes represents nodes in the build grid, that can take part in distributed builds.
2. Connected nodes
   Connected nodes represent connected but unauthorized nodes, a connected node becomes active node when it is authorized.
3. Inactive nodes
   Inactive node is authorized, but it is not currently active. When a node in this list is connected, it will be assigned to the active node list immediately.

Add/remove build nodes

When QuickBuild server is initially installed, it only has one node in the grid - the build server itself, as indicated below:

The active node list displays all the nodes in the build grid, with the first node being server node. Server node can not be restarted or removed.

• To add more nodes to the grid:

1. Follow the agent installation guide to install QuickBuild software on other build machines, and point them to the server instance. The newly connected agents will get the message This build agent is not allowed to join the grid, which means that the agent does not have permission to join the build grid. Next step explains how to allow the agent to join the build grid.
2. Login in to QuickBuild server as administrator and select the connected nodes tab as follows:
   
   The connected nodes page lists all agents connected to the server that have not been allowed to join the build grid. You may choose one or more agents and click the add icon to add them to the grid. The allowed agents will appear in the active node list after a while.

• To remove nodes from the grid:

1. For active nodes, select nodes and click the remove icon. Removed nodes will appear in connected node list.
2. For inactive nodes, select nodes and click the remove icon.

Grid node detail

Details of an active node can be accessed by either clicking the grid node in the active node overview page, or by selecting the grid node from side bar of the build grid page as indicated below:

• Grid node attributes

Node attributes can be used to filter nodes for certain steps by specifying the step property node match condition. For example, the condition node.getAttribute("os.name").startsWith("Windows") matches only agents running Windows operating system, while condition node.hasAttribute("ant") matches agents that have the attribute ant defined.
There are two sets of attributes for a node: system defined attributes and user defined attributes. System defined attributes will be displayed if you select the System Attributes tab as indicated below:

System defined attributes include all environment variables and all Java system properties.

User defined attributes are custom attributes that are defined by user to identify ability of the node. For example, if the agent has Ant and Maven installed, you may define user attributes to reflect this installation as follows:

• Monitor grid node jobs

A single unit of work running on a grid node is called a grid job. In most cases, it is just a step. A grid node may have many jobs running concurrently (for example, steps from builds of different configurations). The number of concurrent jobs is limited by node resources (such as working threads). If the resources are exhausted, newly arriving jobs will be waiting in the queue. A typical job monitoring screen looks like this: