An SSH-Agent will basically retain the data of the SSH-Keys being used in memory, allowing you to connect to the remote-server without having to input your password repeatedly. Usually you will have an SSH-Agent already installed & activated; but in most cases of System-Administration you might have to manually "activate" the SSH-Agent.
In order to ACTIVATE an SSH-Agent, type the following command in your terminal:-
eval "$(ssh-agent)""
In order to verify that it is sucessfully activated manually & running in the background, the command you need to use is:-
ps aux | grep ssh-agent
It will show the PID [AKA "Process-ID"] of the activated SSH-Agent which proves that it is running in the background.
So now we add the copy the PRIVATE-KEY part of the SSH-Key [which DOES NOT HAVE the ".pub" file-extension] SSH-Key to the SSH-Agent via a familiar command which is:-
ssh-add PRIVATE_KEY-LOCATION
Now all is left is to input your password [AGAIN; Provided you added a password to your SSH-Key]. you will only have to do this once & the SSH-Agent will retain it in memory/RAM. The said SSH-Key retained in your system's memory will only be erased from it when you exit/close your Terminal; exiting/closing your terminal will also DE-ACTIVATE your SSH-Agent.