Use cases of Jenkins in Industry
In this article, we are going to discuss about the industry use cases of Jenkins.
What is Jenkins ?🤔
->Jenkins is a free and open source automation server.
->It helps automate the parts of software development related to building, testing, and deploying, facilitating continuous integration and continuous delivery.
->It is a server-based system that runs in servlet containers such as Apache Tomcat.
->It supports version control tools, including AccuRev, CVS, Subversion, Git, Mercurial, Perforce, ClearCase and RTC, and can execute Apache Ant, Apache Maven and sbt based projects as well as arbitrary shell scripts and Windows batch commands.
->Jenkins is an extensible, open source continuous integration server. It builds and tests your software continuously and monitors the execution and status of remote jobs, making it easier for team members and users to regularly obtain the latest stable code.
What is Continuous Integration(CI) ?🤔
Continuous Integration(CI) is a continuous process of of merging new code into the centralized repository.
You can easily find the issues if there are any. The static code checking is perform in this process to catch the bugs earlier. The unit test plays the important role in this process to validate the code merge into the centralized repository. It is best practice to have a build server designed specifically for performing these tests so your development team can continue merging requests even while tests are being performed.
Code changes made by individual team members are merged together into end-to-end working software, which we called as Integration phase.
Jenkins is the ultimate CI tool. It is a cross platform continuous integration application. Jenkins is used to build and test softwares continuously making it easier for developers to build software rapidly. It’s a plug and play as it can not do most work without respective plug-in’s. As continuous integration evolved, the industry created the notion of continuous delivery and continuous deployment to render production deployments a non-issue.
Advantages of using jenkins🔥
1 Free and open source
2 Multiple hosting option
3 Plug-in and integration
4 Community support
5 Easy to debug
✨ Jenkins Architecture ✨
The Jenkins CI server checks the repository at regular intervals and pulls any newly available code.
The Build Server builds the code into an executable file. In case the build fails, feedback is sent to the developers. Jenkins deploys the build application to the test server.
✨ Jenkins Distributed Architecture ✨
Jenkins manages the builds with the help of master-slave architecture. Master and slave units communicate with each other using IP/TCP protocol. Here is a little download on how it all works.
👉Jenkins master :
This is the primary server of Jenkins. It handles a number of tasks that include but are not limited to scheduling build jobs, recording and presenting build results, dispatching builds to slaves for execution, monitoring all the slaves offline as well as online, and others. Master Jenkins is capable of directly executing build jobs.
👉Jenkins slave :
It runs on the remote server. The Jenkins server follows the requests of the Jenkins master and is compatible with all operating systems. Building jobs dispatched by the master are executed by the slave. The project can be suitably configured to choose a specific slave machine.
Benefits of Jenkins 🔥
1.Jenkins is an open-source tool that is extremely easy to install and use. You need no extra components to use it.
2. It is free and available to be used with different platforms, such as Windows, Linux, macOS, and others.
3. It is widely used, so finding support on online communities is not a big problem.
4. Jenkins automates all integration work. Integration issues are scarce, and so, it helps in saving time and money over the project lifecycle.
5. It is easy to configure, extend, and modify. It allows the instant generation of tests and building, automation, and deployment of code on different platforms.
6. Jenkins can be configured to run CI and CD concepts properly.
7. It can easily detect and fix issues. The software is always ready for a sudden release
8. Supports a variety of plugins, which allows better flexibility.
9. It helps in detecting errors very early, thus saving developers a lot of time and hard work.
✍What are the plugins ?🤔
Jenkins has a powerful extension and plugin system that allows developers to write plugins affecting nearly every aspect of Jenkins’ behavior. Even a large part of “core” functionality is written in terms of extensions — extensions that could as well be contributed by plugins.
Some of the more obvious extension points include SCM implementations, integrating SCMs like Git, Subversion, or Perforce into Jenkins; build steps, providing everything from a convenient UI to configure build tools, to sending emails; or authentication realms, integrating Jenkins with Single Sign-On systems, or external user directories such as LDAP or Active Directory.
✍Increase productivity with Jenkins plugins :
Here are a few of the most common plugins used by developers.
👉 Job generation plugin :
Maintaining project jobs in growing or bigger organization is a little difficult, more so because developers are often working on different branches and releases.
While we are ready to let developers create jobs on their own, we are not sure whether they will be able to meet company standards. This is a big dilemma.
This plugin lets you define templates, which your developers can use to create jobs. We can disable configuration access of the template using the role-based authorization plugin.
👉 Global build stats plugin :
Knowing our current capacity, capabilities, and usage is very important to prepare ourself for system requirements or capacity planning.
We should be aware of the number of builds that are happening on a regular basis. We also need to know the time required to release builds.
This plugin provides you with all the necessary information required to answer all these questions.
👉 GitLab/GitHub pull request builder :
We can use this template to automate the code review process in GitLab/GitHub to a level that is higher than usual.
For every pull request, We can expect this plugin to not only run the build but also build results and share the status with a pull request or collect important static analysis.
This plugin tells a lot about the code that needs to be merged. It is also possible to define automatic merge in some circumstances using this plugin.
✍Jenkins Case Study: Avoris Travel
Reinventing travel with an inventive technology platform :
A fast, simple CI/CD matters when your technology is
the driver for a new kind of travel company
👉Avoris. Reinventing Travel :
Ávoris is an innovative project, open to new ideas, driven by digital transformation, committed to excellence and quality, and the undisputed protagonist of the current tourism universe.
A great global tour operator that from Spain and Portugal with a determined spirit of internationalization, has consolidated its presence in 15 Latin American countries and extended its roots to the entire planet: from Asia, through China, to North America, with Miami as the gateway. input.
“Our infrastructure is very important because we have to be online to meet customer demand anywhere in the world,” said Alejandro Alvarez Vazquez, Sysadmin, Avoris Travel. “Our CI/CD platform is used by 200 people. The services that we build and deploy are used by thousands of potential clients and by our network of 675 own agencies located in Spain and Portugal.”
A use case for acceleration while reducing build times by more than half
Process improvement is top of mind for the ops team at Avoris. And Alejandro shared his story for one critical instance where the use of Jenkins made a big difference.
They realized their build times were on the decline, so they sought to minimize their delivery cycle times with Jenkins. The results? The team was able to speed up their CI/CD with shared volumes and more. And they were able to reduce build times more than 50%.
👉Challenge:
With over 200 developers relying on the company’s infrastructure, they needed a secure, easily customizable, and powerful CI/CD platform.
👉Solution:
Avoris Travel, a unique travel company seeking to reinvent the travel industry, relies on an equally inventive technology platform fueled by Jenkins.
👉Results:
- reduced build times over 50% with the flexibility of Jenkins plugins.
- increased the speed of delivery with Jenkins Pipelines.
- Much less problematic and simple deployments for the team.
- scalable infrastructure supporting 675 agencies and over 2.8 million international consumers.
✍Conclusion :
This blog provides a sound idea of how Jenkins works and how it can be used for implementing different project ideas using CI/CD and also its use-cases.
It is one of the most preferred DevOps tools these days that makes things very easy with its effective interface and plugins.
