Azure Pipelines vs Jenkins

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Azure Pipelines vs Jenkins: What are the differences?

Introduction

Azure Pipelines and Jenkins are both popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tools used in software development. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between them that make them more suitable for specific scenarios.

  1. Integration with Azure services: Azure Pipelines is a fully integrated CI/CD solution provided by Microsoft Azure. It provides seamless integration with other Azure services such as Azure DevOps, Azure Repos, and Azure Artifacts. This makes it an excellent choice for organizations already using Azure services in their development processes. Jenkins, on the other hand, is an open-source tool that requires manual configuration and integration with external services.

  2. Ease of setup and maintenance: Azure Pipelines offers a cloud-based solution that requires minimal setup and maintenance effort. It automatically scales to meet the needs of your development projects, eliminating the need for resource management. Jenkins, being a self-hosted tool, requires manual installation, configuration, and ongoing maintenance of infrastructure resources. This can be time-consuming and resource-intensive, especially for smaller development teams.

  3. Pipeline as code: Azure Pipelines supports pipeline configuration using the YAML syntax, also known as "pipeline as code". YAML allows developers to version control the pipeline configuration along with the source code, making it easier to manage and track changes over time. Jenkins, though it offers some support for pipeline definition using plugins like Jenkinsfile, does not provide a native and standardized approach for pipeline as code.

  4. Extensibility and plugin ecosystem: Jenkins has a vast plugin ecosystem, with thousands of plugins available for extending its functionality. This makes it highly customizable and adaptable to various development environments. Azure Pipelines, though it also supports extensions and integrations, has a more limited selection of available extensions compared to Jenkins.

  5. Cost: Azure Pipelines offers a generous free tier for public projects and provides usage-based pricing for private projects. The cost is directly linked to the usage of Azure resources. Jenkins, being a self-hosted tool, requires the allocation of infrastructure resources, which can involve additional costs for hardware, maintenance, and upgrades.

  6. Community and support: Jenkins has a large and active community of users and contributors, providing ample resources for documentation, tutorials, and troubleshooting. Azure Pipelines, being a product of Microsoft, benefits from the support of the Microsoft Azure community and Microsoft's technical expertise. Microsoft offers comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and support options, making it a reliable choice for enterprises requiring extensive support.

In summary, Azure Pipelines offers seamless integration with Azure services, requires minimal setup and maintenance effort, supports pipeline as code, has a more limited selection of extensions compared to Jenkins, provides cost benefits with its usage-based pricing model, and benefits from the support of Microsoft's technical expertise. Jenkins, on the other hand, requires manual configuration and maintenance, has a vast plugin ecosystem for extensibility, incurs costs for infrastructure resources, and has an active community providing extensive resources for support.

Advice on Azure Pipelines and Jenkins
Needs advice
on
Azure PipelinesAzure Pipelines
and
JenkinsJenkins

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.

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Replies (1)
Recommends
on
GitHubGitHub

If your source code is on GitHub, also take a look at Github actions. https://github.com/features/actions

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Mohammad Hossein Amri
Chief Technology Officer at Planally · | 3 upvotes · 494.6K views
Needs advice
on
GoCDGoCD
and
JenkinsJenkins

I'm open to anything. just want something that break less and doesn't need me to pay for it, and can be hosted on Docker. our scripting language is powershell core. so it's better to support it. also we are building dotnet core in our pipeline, so if they have anything related that helps with the CI would be nice.

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Replies (1)
Ankit Malik
Software Developer at CloudCover · | 1 upvotes · 477.4K views
Recommends
on
Google Cloud BuildGoogle Cloud Build

Google cloud build can help you. It is hosted on cloud and also provide reasonable free quota.

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Needs advice
on
ConcourseConcourse
and
JenkinsJenkins

I'm planning to setup complete CD-CD setup for spark and python application which we are going to deploy in aws lambda and EMR Cluster. Which tool would be best one to choose. Since my company is trying to adopt to concourse i would like to understand what are the lack of capabilities concourse have . Thanks in advance !

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Replies (1)
Maxi Krone
Cloud Engineer at fme AG · | 2 upvotes · 396.1K views
Recommends
on
ConcourseConcourse

I would definetly recommend Concourse to you, as it is one of the most advanced modern methods of making CI/CD while Jenkins is an old monolithic dinosaur. Concourse itself is cloudnative and containerbased which helps you to build simple, high-performance and scalable CI/CD pipelines. In my opinion, the only lack of skills you have with Concourse is your own knowledge of how to build pipelines and automate things. Technincally there is no lack, i would even say you can extend it way more easily. But as a Con it is more easy to interact with Jenkins if you are only used to UIs. Concourse needs someone which is capable of using CLIs.

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Needs advice
on
JenkinsJenkinsTravis CITravis CI
and
CircleCICircleCI

From a StackShare Community member: "Currently we use Travis CI and have optimized it as much as we can so our builds are fairly quick. Our boss is all about redundancy so we are looking for another solution to fall back on in case Travis goes down and/or jacks prices way up (they were recently acquired). Could someone recommend which CI we should go with and if they have time, an explanation of how they're different?"

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Replies (6)
Dustin Falgout
Senior Developer at Elegant Themes · | 13 upvotes · 547.5K views

We use CircleCI because of the better value it provides in its plans. I'm sure we could have used Travis just as easily but we found CircleCI's pricing to be more reasonable. In the two years since we signed up, the service has improved. CircleCI is always innovating and iterating on their platform. We have been very satisfied.

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Peter Thomas
Distinguished Engineer at Intuit · | 9 upvotes · 857.7K views
Recommends
on
Travis CITravis CI
at

As the maintainer of the Karate DSL open-source project - I found Travis CI very easy to integrate into the GitHub workflow and it has been steady sailing for more than 2 years now ! It works well for Java / Apache Maven projects and we were able to configure it to use the latest Oracle JDK as per our needs. Thanks to the Travis CI team for this service to the open-source community !

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Recommends
on
Google Cloud BuildGoogle Cloud Build

I use Google Cloud Build because it's my first foray into the CICD world(loving it so far), and I wanted to work with something GCP native to avoid giving permissions to other SaaS tools like CircleCI and Travis CI.

I really like it because it's free for the first 120 minutes, and it's one of the few CICD tools that enterprises are open to using since it's contained within GCP.

One of the unique things is that it has the Kaniko cache, which speeds up builds by creating intermediate layers within the docker image vs. pushing the full thing from the start. Helpful when you're installing just a few additional dependencies.

Feel free to checkout an example: Cloudbuild Example

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Recommends
on
Travis CITravis CI

I use Travis CI because of various reasons - 1. Cloud based system so no dedicated server required, and you do not need to administrate it. 2. Easy YAML configuration. 3. Supports Major Programming Languages. 4. Support of build matrix 6. Supports AWS, Azure, Docker, Heroku, Google Cloud, Github Pages, PyPi and lot more. 7. Slack Notifications.

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Oded Arbel
Recommends
on
GitLab CIGitLab CI

You are probably looking at another hosted solution: Jenkins is a good tool but it way too work intensive to be used as just a backup solution.

I have good experience with Circle-CI, Codeship, Drone.io and Travis (as well as problematic experiences with all of them), but my go-to tool is Gitlab CI: simple, powerful and if you have problems with their limitations or pricing, you can always install runners somewhere and use Gitlab just for scheduling and management. Even if you don't host your git repository at Gitlab, you can have Gitlab pull changes automatically from wherever you repo lives.

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Recommends
on
BuildkiteBuildkite

If you are considering Jenkins I would recommend at least checking out Buildkite. The agents are self-hosted (like Jenkins) but the interface is hosted for you. It meshes up some of the things I like about hosted services (pipeline definitions in YAML, managed interface and authentication) with things I like about Jenkins (local customizable agent images, secrets only on own instances, custom agent level scripts, sizing instances to your needs).

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Decisions about Azure Pipelines and Jenkins

Jenkins is a pretty flexible, complete tool. Especially I love the possibility to configure jobs as a code with Jenkins pipelines.

CircleCI is well suited for small projects where the main task is to run continuous integration as quickly as possible. Travis CI is recommended primarily for open-source projects that need to be tested in different environments.

And for something a bit larger I prefer to use Jenkins because it is possible to make serious system configuration thereby different plugins. In Jenkins, I can change almost anything. But if you want to start the CI chain as soon as possible, Jenkins may not be the right choice.

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Pros of Azure Pipelines
Pros of Jenkins
  • 4
    Easy to get started
  • 3
    Unlimited CI/CD minutes
  • 3
    Built by Microsoft
  • 2
    Yaml support
  • 2
    Docker support
  • 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
  • 111
    Has support for build pipelines
  • 68
    Easy setup
  • 66
    It is open-source
  • 53
    Workflow plugin
  • 13
    Configuration as code
  • 12
    Very powerful tool
  • 11
    Many Plugins
  • 10
    Continuous Integration
  • 10
    Great flexibility
  • 9
    Git and Maven integration is better
  • 8
    100% free and open source
  • 7
    Slack Integration (plugin)
  • 7
    Github integration
  • 6
    Self-hosted GitLab Integration (plugin)
  • 6
    Easy customisation
  • 5
    Pipeline API
  • 5
    Docker support
  • 4
    Fast builds
  • 4
    Hosted Externally
  • 4
    Excellent docker integration
  • 4
    Platform idnependency
  • 3
    AWS Integration
  • 3
    JOBDSL
  • 3
    It's Everywhere
  • 3
    Customizable
  • 3
    Can be run as a Docker container
  • 3
    It`w worked
  • 2
    Loose Coupling
  • 2
    NodeJS Support
  • 2
    Build PR Branch Only
  • 2
    Easily extendable with seamless integration
  • 2
    PHP Support
  • 2
    Ruby/Rails Support
  • 2
    Universal controller

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Cons of Azure Pipelines
Cons of Jenkins
    Be the first to leave a con
    • 13
      Workarounds needed for basic requirements
    • 10
      Groovy with cumbersome syntax
    • 8
      Plugins compatibility issues
    • 7
      Lack of support
    • 7
      Limited abilities with declarative pipelines
    • 5
      No YAML syntax
    • 4
      Too tied to plugins versions

    Sign up to add or upvote consMake informed product decisions

    - No public GitHub repository available -

    What is Azure Pipelines?

    Fast builds with parallel jobs and test execution. Use container jobs to create consistent and reliable builds with the exact tools you need. Create new containers with ease and push them to any registry.

    What is Jenkins?

    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.

    Need advice about which tool to choose?Ask the StackShare community!

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    What are some alternatives to Azure Pipelines and Jenkins?
    AWS Data Pipeline
    AWS Data Pipeline is a web service that provides a simple management system for data-driven workflows. Using AWS Data Pipeline, you define a pipeline composed of the “data sources” that contain your data, the “activities” or business logic such as EMR jobs or SQL queries, and the “schedule” on which your business logic executes. For example, you could define a job that, every hour, runs an Amazon Elastic MapReduce (Amazon EMR)–based analysis on that hour’s Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3) log data, loads the results into a relational database for future lookup, and then automatically sends you a daily summary email.
    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.
    AWS CodePipeline
    CodePipeline builds, tests, and deploys your code every time there is a code change, based on the release process models you define.
    Azure Data Factory
    It is a service designed to allow developers to integrate disparate data sources. It is a platform somewhat like SSIS in the cloud to manage the data you have both on-prem and in the cloud.
    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.
    See all alternatives