AWS CloudFormation vs Jenkins

Overview

AWS CloudFormation

Stacks1.6K

Followers1.3K

Votes88

Jenkins

Stacks59.2K

Followers50.4K

Votes2.2K

GitHub Stars24.6K

Forks9.2K

AWS CloudFormation vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction:

AWS CloudFormation and Jenkins are two popular tools that are used in DevOps pipeline management. While both tools serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two.

Scalability and Automation: AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows users to script and automate the deployment and management of their cloud infrastructure. It provides a declarative way of defining and provisioning resources using templates. On the other hand, Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps automate the building, testing, and deployment of software applications. Jenkins provides a flexible and extensible platform for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
Purpose: AWS CloudFormation is primarily focused on infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and is used to provision and manage cloud resources, such as virtual machines, storage, networking, and more. It allows users to define their infrastructure requirements and then deploys and manages those resources automatically. Jenkins, on the other hand, is primarily focused on application deployment. It helps automate the build, test, and deployment processes of applications and enables developers to integrate changes and deliver software faster.
Managed Service vs Self-Hosted: AWS CloudFormation is a managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is part of their suite of cloud services. This means that users do not need to worry about the underlying infrastructure and maintenance of the service. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a self-hosted open-source tool that needs to be installed and maintained by the user. This gives users more control and flexibility over the configuration and customization of their Jenkins environment.
Integration: AWS CloudFormation integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and can be used to provision and manage resources across multiple AWS accounts and regions. It also provides integration with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained access control and security. Jenkins, on the other hand, provides a wide range of plugins that enable integration with various tools and services, such as source code repositories, build systems, testing frameworks, and deployment platforms. This allows users to build custom CI/CD pipelines tailored to their specific needs.
Cost: AWS CloudFormation pricing is based on the resources provisioned and managed by the service. Users are charged for the resources they use, such as EC2 instances and storage volumes. Jenkins, on the other hand, is an open-source tool and does not have any licensing costs. However, users need to consider the costs associated with hosting and maintaining the Jenkins server infrastructure.

In summary, AWS CloudFormation is a managed service for provisioning and managing cloud infrastructure using templates, while Jenkins is an open-source automation server for building, testing, and deploying applications. CloudFormation focuses on infrastructure-as-code, while Jenkins focuses on application deployment. CloudFormation is a managed service provided by AWS, while Jenkins needs to be self-hosted. CloudFormation integrates with other AWS services, while Jenkins provides plugins for integration with various tools. CloudFormation pricing is based on resource usage, while Jenkins has no licensing costs but requires infrastructure maintenance.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on AWS CloudFormation, Jenkins

Timothy

SRE

Mar 20, 2020

Decided

I personally am not a huge fan of vendor lock in for multiple reasons:

I've seen cost saving moves to the cloud end up costing a fortune and trapping companies due to over utilization of cloud specific features.
I've seen S3 failures nearly take down half the internet.
I've seen companies get stuck in the cloud because they aren't built cloud agnostic.

I choose to use terraform for my cloud provisioning for these reasons:

It's cloud agnostic so I can use it no matter where I am.
It isn't difficult to use and uses a relatively easy to read language.
It tests infrastructure before running it, and enables me to see and keep changes up to date.
It runs from the same CLI I do most of my CM work from.

385k views385k

Comments

Balaramesh

Apr 20, 2020

Needs adviceon

Azure Pipelines

.NET

Jenkins

We are currently using Azure Pipelines for continous integration. Our applications are developed witn .NET framework. But when we look at the online Jenkins is the most widely used tool for continous integration. Can you please give me the advice which one is best to use for my case Azure pipeline or jenkins.

663k views663k

Comments

Daniel

May 4, 2020

Decided

Because Pulumi uses real programming languages, you can actually write abstractions for your infrastructure code, which is incredibly empowering. You still 'describe' your desired state, but by having a programming language at your fingers, you can factor out patterns, and package it up for easier consumption.

426k views426k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

AWS CloudFormation	Jenkins
You can use AWS CloudFormation’s sample templates or create your own templates to describe the AWS resources, and any associated dependencies or runtime parameters, required to run your application. You don’t need to figure out the order in which AWS services need to be provisioned or the subtleties of how to make those dependencies work.	In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.
AWS CloudFormation comes with the following ready-to-run sample templates: WordPress (blog),Tracks (project tracking), Gollum (wiki used by GitHub), Drupal (content management), Joomla (content management), Insoshi (social apps), Redmine (project mgmt);No Need to Reinvent the Wheel – A template can be used repeatedly to create identical copies of the same stack (or to use as a foundation to start a new stack);Transparent and Open – Templates are simple JSON formatted text files that can be placed under your normal source control mechanisms, stored in private or public locations such as Amazon S3 and exchanged via email.;Declarative and Flexible – To create the infrastructure you want, you enumerate what AWS resources, configuration values and interconnections you need in a template and then let AWS CloudFormation do the rest with a few simple clicks in the AWS Management Console, via the command line tools or by calling the APIs.	Easy installation;Easy configuration;Change set support;Permanent links;RSS/E-mail/IM Integration;After-the-fact tagging;JUnit/TestNG test reporting;Distributed builds;File fingerprinting;Plugin Support
Statistics
GitHub Stars -	GitHub Stars 24.6K
GitHub Forks -	GitHub Forks 9.2K
Stacks 1.6K	Stacks 59.2K
Followers 1.3K	Followers 50.4K
Votes 88	Votes 2.2K
Pros & Cons
Pros 43 Automates infrastructure deployments 21 Declarative infrastructure and deployment 13 No more clicking around 3 Any Operative System you want 3 Infrastructure as code Cons 4 Brittle 2 No RBAC and policies in templates	Pros 523 Hosted internally 469 Free open source 318 Great to build, deploy or launch anything async 243 Tons of integrations 211 Rich set of plugins with good documentation Cons 13 Workarounds needed for basic requirements 10 Groovy with cumbersome syntax 8 Plugins compatibility issues 7 Limited abilities with declarative pipelines 7 Lack of support

What are some alternatives to AWS CloudFormation, Jenkins?

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

CircleCI

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Buildkite

CI and build automation tool that combines the power of your own build infrastructure with the convenience of a managed, centralized web UI. Used by Shopify, Basecamp, Digital Ocean, Venmo, Cochlear, Bugsnag and more.

Snap CI

Snap CI is a cloud-based continuous integration & continuous deployment tool with powerful deployment pipelines. Integrates seamlessly with GitHub and provides fast feedback so you can deploy with ease.

Related Comparisons

AWS CloudFormation vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction:

AWS CloudFormation and Jenkins are two popular tools that are used in DevOps pipeline management. While both tools serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two.

Scalability and Automation: AWS CloudFormation is a service that allows users to script and automate the deployment and management of their cloud infrastructure. It provides a declarative way of defining and provisioning resources using templates. On the other hand, Jenkins is an open-source automation server that helps automate the building, testing, and deployment of software applications. Jenkins provides a flexible and extensible platform for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.
Purpose: AWS CloudFormation is primarily focused on infrastructure-as-code (IaC) and is used to provision and manage cloud resources, such as virtual machines, storage, networking, and more. It allows users to define their infrastructure requirements and then deploys and manages those resources automatically. Jenkins, on the other hand, is primarily focused on application deployment. It helps automate the build, test, and deployment processes of applications and enables developers to integrate changes and deliver software faster.
Managed Service vs Self-Hosted: AWS CloudFormation is a managed service provided by Amazon Web Services (AWS) and is part of their suite of cloud services. This means that users do not need to worry about the underlying infrastructure and maintenance of the service. Jenkins, on the other hand, is a self-hosted open-source tool that needs to be installed and maintained by the user. This gives users more control and flexibility over the configuration and customization of their Jenkins environment.
Integration: AWS CloudFormation integrates seamlessly with other AWS services and can be used to provision and manage resources across multiple AWS accounts and regions. It also provides integration with AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) for fine-grained access control and security. Jenkins, on the other hand, provides a wide range of plugins that enable integration with various tools and services, such as source code repositories, build systems, testing frameworks, and deployment platforms. This allows users to build custom CI/CD pipelines tailored to their specific needs.
Cost: AWS CloudFormation pricing is based on the resources provisioned and managed by the service. Users are charged for the resources they use, such as EC2 instances and storage volumes. Jenkins, on the other hand, is an open-source tool and does not have any licensing costs. However, users need to consider the costs associated with hosting and maintaining the Jenkins server infrastructure.

AWS CloudFormation vs Jenkins

Overview