11 – Tools – Jenkins – Not your everyday butler

Last Episode recap

  • In the last episode, we discussed CI/CD and related build topics.  We talked about what good CI should look like and what components make up that CI.  We talked about CD and how that is typically done and also dis-jointed or dis-associated CI and CD.

Summary of this episode

  • In this episode, we are going to discuss Jenkins and how it can be used in your automation.

What’s in it for you

  • Once you listen to this episode you should have a better understanding of what Jenkins is and how it can be used, the types of tasks that can be automated, and some of the items that can be configured (plugins) to enable automation.

Jenkins description

  • what is it
    • Jenkins is an automation platform that can perform a variety of tasks to enable your automation.  It can be used to run your CI/CD  pipelines integration your SCM to your automation all the way to your production environment.
  • what’s it used for
    • build jobs
    • testing jobs
    • deployment jobs
    • reporting jobs
    • auditing jobs
    • monitoring jobs
  • good use cases
  • types of jobs
    • freestyle
    • pipelines
    • multi-branch pipeline
  • plugins
    • examples:  folders, pipelines ( many different plugins ), git, ansible, artifactory, azure app service, credentials, docker, generic webhook, groovy, mask passwords, nexus artifact uploader, SSH plugin, and many more.
    • when are they useful and when should you use them
      • usually when a vendor has an integration plugin and you can’t put it into your pipeline as code
      • or when it is a very specialized piece of functionality that you cannot easily code
    • when should you not use them
      • when you can easily code the functionality in your pipeline code (ssh to another server perform a task)
  • agent nodes
    • accessing agent nodes
    • ssh creds
  • folder security
    • matrix based security
    • LDAP security
  • Integrations
    • SCM
    • others

recap of this episode

  • Description
  • Use cases
  • Job types
  • Plugins
  • Agent Nodes
  • Security
  • Integrations