Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu Reviews

My main use case for Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu is building pipelines for CI/CD and making sure that it has the proper security where the product that we deploy demands it.

The best features Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu offers are primarily centered around the security aspect of it, including a security baseline, the ability to set it up as a reverse proxy, and ensuring that it does not allow access to the internet or any other unwanted networks in the company.

The security baseline and reverse proxy setup of Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu has helped my team by offering a reduced attack surface, meaning we can remove or disable any unnecessary packages. The agents are exposed only to the environments they need access to. Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu node is built in the same hardened image. Troubleshooting is easier thanks to a more predictable OS behavior compared to a Jenkins server running on a regular server with access by different teams, and we have a better compliance posture.

Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu really helped me out in a specific deployment scenario by having a lot of different plugins and being a tool that has been around for a very long time. For continuous integration pipelines, it can be used in a number of different ways, whether it is deploying Kubernetes containers or deploying C# code in Azure Functions, as it can handle pretty much anything thanks to the number of extensions and the community around it.

One area Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu could improve is role control, particularly with RBAC permissions, as this has been an issue for a long time. While some plugins have helped in the past, they are now out of support, making it hard to establish a proper RBAC setup and integrate with SSO, MFA, and similar security measures. Adding some observability with more logs and traces would also be beneficial.

I have been using Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu for about five to six years on and off.

Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu is stable.

Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu's scalability is acceptable, but nothing fancy, as it is an old product.

I have never used customer support for Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu, if there is any.

I used Azure DevOps, CircleCI, and other tools, but I did not switch per se; they were just used in a different project.

Before choosing Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu, I evaluated Azure DevOps and CircleCI.

My advice to others looking into using Jenkins on Hardened Ubuntu is that if you really have to use it, it is a good option to give it a try. I would rate this product a 7.