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Jenkins vs Spinnaker: What are the differences?
Introduction:
Jenkins and Spinnaker are both popular continuous integration and delivery tools used in the software development lifecycle. While they serve similar purposes, there are key differences between the two.
Integration with Cloud Platforms: Jenkins primarily focuses on integrating with various cloud platforms to facilitate continuous integration and delivery processes. It provides extensive plugins and integrations for cloud service providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure. On the other hand, Spinnaker is specifically designed for cloud-native applications and is more tightly integrated with cloud platforms like AWS, Google Cloud Platform, and Kubernetes.
Deployment Strategies: Jenkins supports a wide range of deployment strategies, including rolling updates, blue-green deployments, and canary deployments. It allows users to define their own custom deployment strategies based on their requirements. Spinnaker, on the other hand, emphasizes the use of automated deployment pipelines. It provides built-in deployment strategies like rolling red/black deployments and canary analysis, which makes it easier for teams to implement advanced deployment patterns.
Pipeline Configuration and Management: Jenkins offers a more flexible approach to pipeline configuration and management. Users can define their pipeline scripts using Jenkinsfile, written in Groovy, which allows for complex, customized workflows. Spinnaker, on the other hand, follows a more declarative approach where pipelines are defined using a YAML-based configuration file. This makes it easier for teams to version control and manage pipelines as code.
Multi-Cloud Support: Jenkins is often used in hybrid or multi-cloud environments, allowing users to automate workflows across different cloud providers. It provides flexibility in integrating with different tools and technologies to meet the needs of various cloud setups. Spinnaker, on the other hand, is primarily built for multi-cloud environments and offers native support for managing deployments across multiple cloud platforms, making it a preferred choice for organizations working with diverse cloud infrastructures.
Community and Support: Jenkins has a large and active community with a vast number of plugins and extensions available, which makes it highly customizable and extendable. The community actively contributes to its development and provides support to users. While Spinnaker also has an active community, it is comparatively smaller when compared to Jenkins. However, it is backed by major technology companies, including Netflix and Google, which ensures continuous development and support.
User Interface and Visualization: Jenkins provides a web-based user interface that allows users to view and manage jobs, pipelines, and build status. It also offers various plugins for visualizing pipeline execution using charts and graphs. On the other hand, Spinnaker provides a more comprehensive and user-friendly interface for managing application deployments. It offers a graphical dashboard that provides a visual representation of the deployment pipelines, enabling users to easily monitor and manage their application releases.
In Summary, Jenkins focuses on integrating with various cloud platforms and offers a flexible pipeline configuration approach, while Spinnaker is designed for cloud-native applications, has built-in deployment strategies, and offers native support for managing deployments across multiple cloud platforms, making it a preferred choice for multi-cloud environments.
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.
If your source code is on GitHub, also take a look at Github actions. https://github.com/features/actions
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.
Google cloud build can help you. It is hosted on cloud and also provide reasonable free quota.
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 !
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.
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?"
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.
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 !
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
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.
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.
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).
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.
Pros of Jenkins
- Hosted internally523
- Free open source469
- Great to build, deploy or launch anything async318
- Tons of integrations243
- Rich set of plugins with good documentation211
- Has support for build pipelines111
- Easy setup68
- It is open-source66
- Workflow plugin53
- Configuration as code13
- Very powerful tool12
- Many Plugins11
- Continuous Integration10
- Great flexibility10
- Git and Maven integration is better9
- 100% free and open source8
- Github integration7
- Slack Integration (plugin)7
- Easy customisation6
- Self-hosted GitLab Integration (plugin)6
- Docker support5
- Pipeline API5
- Fast builds4
- Platform idnependency4
- Hosted Externally4
- Excellent docker integration4
- It`w worked3
- Customizable3
- Can be run as a Docker container3
- It's Everywhere3
- JOBDSL3
- AWS Integration3
- Easily extendable with seamless integration2
- PHP Support2
- Build PR Branch Only2
- NodeJS Support2
- Ruby/Rails Support2
- Universal controller2
- Loose Coupling2
Pros of Spinnaker
- Mature14
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Cons of Jenkins
- Workarounds needed for basic requirements13
- Groovy with cumbersome syntax10
- Plugins compatibility issues8
- Lack of support7
- Limited abilities with declarative pipelines7
- No YAML syntax5
- Too tied to plugins versions4
Cons of Spinnaker
- No GitOps3
- Configuration time1
- Management overhead1
- Ease of use1