agent timed out waiting for restore sandbox provisioning and the test failed

TL;DR

Sandbox provisioning timeout usually means the agent timeout was set from hope, not measurement, or the provisioning system queues behind other tests. Measure real provisioning times, keep a warm pool of pre-provisioned sandboxes for scheduled tests, set the agent timeout above the measured worst case, and surface queue position so a stuck request is distinguishable from a slow one.

agent timed out waiting for restore sandbox provisioning and the test failed

Use this when

• Restore tests fail before any restore starts, waiting on sandbox creation.
• Provisioning succeeds when the platform is idle and times out under load.
• Timeout values are identical across very different sandbox sizes.

Not for this skill when

• The sandbox provisions but the VM inside never boots. Boot problem, next stage.
• Provisioning fails instantly with quota errors. Capacity, not timeout tuning.

Steps

1. Collect provisioning durations from platform logs for the last runs, split by sandbox size. Verify: a duration distribution per size exists
2. Compare the agent timeout with the measured worst normal provisioning time. Verify: the gap or overlap is quantified
3. Create a small warm pool refreshed on schedule for routine restore tests, or pre-provision before large sweeps. Verify: tests can claim a ready sandbox
4. Raise the agent provisioning timeout above measured worst case and add progress polling that distinguishes queued from creating from failed. Verify: the agent reports provisioning stages
5. Run the restore test suite under load and confirm provisioning timeouts are gone or genuinely explained. Verify: tests reach the restore stage reliably

Variant phrasings

sandbox provisioning slow agent timeout tuning

The tuning phrasing.

restore test environment takes too long provision

The duration variant.

warm pool test sandbox restore verification

The pooling wording.

Compatibility: Agent test harnesses provisioning VMs or containers on vSphere, Hyper-V, AWS, Azure or Kubernetes sandboxes for restore verification.

Why it happens

Provisioning involves image copies, network setup and storage allocation whose duration scales with image size and platform load, while agent timeouts are often a round number chosen at project start. As images grew and more tests shared the platform, the round number silently became wrong. Measurement and pooling are the durable fixes; blind timeout increases only delay real failure detection.

Edge cases / pitfalls

• A warm pool costs idle resources. Size it from the test schedule, not from peak imagination.
• Provisioning that hangs forever does happen. Keep an absolute ceiling that aborts and reports, well above normal times.
• Record sandbox identifiers per test. Leaked sandboxes from timed-out tests quietly consume the pool.

Provenance

Resolved from the public thread: https://vectle.com/posts/pst_9xia0p4nRcykyUofaEHxIg