Jenkins Reviews

The Jenkins Job DSL plug-in is the most valuable.

We have been able to create CI jobs for each branch of our repository. Being able to test builds for each branch before it is merged to mainstream branch helped to improve stability of the app and have faster develop-test iterations.

The installation process could be simplified, especially on Mac OS X.

I've used it for eight months.

Yes because the installation process is not obvious.

The default settings do not work properly on Mac OS X. You have to tweak JVM parameters and allocate more heap memory as well as change other parameters to have a stable Jenkins server.

I haven't had to scale up yet. We have one build box which is running two agents on it.

As this is open source, there is no such thing as customer service, but there is a big community to look for information and get answers.

As this is open source, there is no such thing as tech support, but there is a big community to look for information and get answers.

Personally, I previously used Bamboo. I switched because I changed jobs and at my new place Jenkins had been used. It would unjustified to do a move from Jenkins to Bamboo, given that Jenkins is capable of performing same tasks.

It was complex and additional knowledge about launch agents and daemons is required. There are at least three, if not four, different ways to install and configure Jenkins, which is not always good.

We implemented it in-house.

It's high because the product is free.

The original setup. for us, was the cost of a new Mac Mini box which costs, from $1,000 to $2,000 depending on the configuration.

This is a very good, powerful and flexible product, but requires a lot of time investment to get the maximum out of it.

I'm a software engineer at a large bank. 

Jenkins increases our performance efficiency and saves us a significant amount of time.

We were initially SQL-based until we moved to object-oriented language and started hosting our code on Jenkins. The main benefit for us is the automation and we've done it in such a way that you only need to run one build that triggers itself and the rest of the builds downstream. We're moving most of our builds over to Jenkins because of all the automation it offers. It has a good interface, is reliable, and saves time. 

I think the logs could be improved so that anyone using the build for the first time gets a better view as to how it's performing, what the data is, and what processing is occurring. I'd like to see errors displayed differently. It currently takes an effort to find out where an error is and I think the error message and logging which is not jargon-based, is something I would like to see included.

I've been using this solution for two years. 

This is a stable solution. We are a team of 25 people, all working with Jenkins in some way or other, whether it's the finance data adapter or the magnet platform, which is totally Java-based and uses Jenkins. We have mainly software engineers and a few business analysts on the team. We also have a maintenance team that deals with any issues that come up.

I have tried the partial plugin for Jenkins which we use for regression and analysis and it works well. 

Our technical support is all in-house. All software deployment information is available online and it's pretty easy to follow. 

We have a license contract with Jenkins. 

Jenkins is a great solution if you're looking at automation because it reduces manual work and improves performance. If you deploy it on cloud, then performance is improved further. It's worth reducing dependency by targeting a one-build solution for Jenkins. 

I rate the solution eight out of 10. 

We mainly use Jenkins as a CI/CD setup for our development, as a build tool to build, test, and deploy.

There is room for improvement in the setup. The setup could become easier.

Another area of improvement is the user interface. Jenkins could simplify the user interface a little bit because it sometimes creates too many features cramped in the UI. So we would like to have a bit of a streamlined user interface.

I have been using Jenkins for a couple of years. 

It is a stable solution.

We had some issues with scalability. Our organization has around 5,000 end users because Jenkins is our primary CI\CD tool. 

The initial setup is not that complicated, but also it's not very simple. You need to educate yourself a little bit.

It is a cheap solution. 

I would definitely recommend using this solution.

Overall, I would rate the solution a six out of ten because Jenkins is a very useful tool. However, it's not a ten because it has some issues like too many features cramped in the UI, and users need to invest some time in educating themselves to fully understand it.

My primary use case is as a CI pipeline in order to deploy onto the GCP. This allows us to push any changes into the master brand.

The major benefit of using Jenkins is that it's a very secure way of deploying something to the cloud. It has also improved the drawbacks of manual deployments by making them more robust and secure, and it helps the user avoid mistakes because all the checks are there in one script which can be used every time.

The most valuable feature of Jenkins is the logs it provides - these are very helpful in understanding error conditions so we can see where the problem lies and go in and check it. Another useful feature is the GUI, which estimates how long a particular model will need to be executed. It's also very easy to understand for newcomers. 

One area for improvement would be the UI, which currently looks quite outdated and requires the user to go through too many steps. In the next release, I would like to have the ability to use the command prompt to navigate between repositories and to enable features.

There are some minor bugs with this solution, but overall the stability is ok.

Jenkins is very scalable.

The initial deployment is easy if you are familiar with script creation - a person who is unfamiliar with this might have difficulties with setup. It can be set up by a single person in four to five hours.

I would rate this solution as eight out of ten.

We use this solution in conjunction with Java which is installed. We have to give it the main part, our desk framework and the GI repository. The solution automatically takes the code from the GI repository and automatically executes it as a face task. It could be done at a set time for minutes, hours, and any day of the week. For example, if we want to get it right every day, it has to be set automatically to take the quote.

Jenkins's open-based framework is very valuable. Most of the time, we go open-based and use any test automation, not only for the automation framework but for the developers. They will trigger the jobs also using Jenkins with blue ocean, but there is a cost, and anything you need can be related to Java. For example, if you want to build your application and deploy it, Jenkins takes one day compared with CA or other circles, and in addition, the bamboo Jenkins is a popular solution.

The solutions integrations support and reporting could be improved. Currently, Jenkins provides the features automatically. However, if we can trigger the job from our mobile, that would be great. We have done it once, but the next time we tried, it did not work. For example, when I was in India, I tried to execute our Jenkins job but could not. However, when I put the privacy on my data and phone, I connected to the VPN, and it automatically triggered.

We have been using this solution as users for over six years and are currently using version 2.23.1.

The solution is stable.

The solution is scalable. We can also add users for the particular solution, but that does not apply to the free version. We use the enterprise edition. Enterprise edition means it creates the domain for automation. Public members, can't access this edition, so if you're adding users for your members or groups, you have to go for the land visitation and the maintenance.

In my organization, over 50 users use this solution, specifically developers and QA leads. Not everyone has access to Jenkins because of the use of only one username and password. For example, if I'm developing scripts, my team members also develop them, and we push into the solution. But for Jenkins, it's only one access.

We do not have any experience with customer service and support.

 The initial setup is easy. If you follow the documentation, it only takes a maximum of 20 minutes.

We chose this solution because the deployment was right. We have to go further when it comes to the interface edition. Also, it's less when you are competitive with the travel CVA and the bamboo, and we will find the resources using Jenkins easily when it comes to the market level. So that's why we preferred Jenkins.

I rate this solution a seven out of ten. My advice is to go for the proof of concept. Go with the open source and follow this solution because it works. If you get a paid version, you'll have a trial version for some days. If it suits your requirements, then you can purchase it. Otherwise, if you purchase it and it does not meet your needs, then it's a waste of money. See how you can model the integrations, the automation, and the frameworks and then go further into the interface solution.

The solution is good but it can be improved by including automated mobile reporting integrations.

I use Jenkins for the continuous integration and continuous delivery phases of my pipeline. For the continuous integration part, we use GitHub with Webhook. If we have a development environment and the developer pushes anything, Jenkins will trigger the job right away. But if it is going to stage all the production environments, then Jenkins will start the job, and the developer will create a pull request. 

We can see that the test cases have passed, and the GitHub branch is ready to be merged into the feature branch. And for the continuous delivery pipeline, we are pushing things ourselves through Helm. So whenever we have to deploy something, we have created or developed our stages, through which we use Helm charts and deploy our solution.

Since we are using microservice architecture, most of our infrastructure is Kubernetes-based, which means we use docker containers inside that and cloud environments to spin up our solutions quickly. Jenkins is running inside Kubernetes, and Jenkins has some hooks attached to it. And with the plugins attached, you can spin up the container on the go whenever we have to build a job. And when the job is complete, the container is deleted. It's not like we have some node in Jenkins. The architecture comprises a master and a slave node, and you can run jobs on the slave node.

Our slave nodes work under both containers, which we are only spinning up when we need. And when we are done, we are just stripping them out instead of having our virtual machines running all the time. That is an interesting aspect of this architecture for us. Microservices waste architecture, so we use Kubernetes infrastructure with containers to spin up our slave nodes and handle the workload or the computing.

We use Jenkins for everything. We want to empower developers to have the confidence to deploy their solutions themselves into production instead of asking us as an operations guide. Even if they have to create a repository in GitHub, we have scripts behind Jenkins that can go ahead and make these for them. It's a core component of our development pipelines and developers' lives in our organization.

We used to have around 30 to 40 services, which we had to use in our microservices architecture. Now, when we have to deploy things due to the same code base, we have to write the same code every time and repeatedly in the Jenkins file. It's a monotonous job, and we cannot innovate. We are just copy-pasting the Jenkins file and only changing a few things in it. That wasn't the kind of DevOps experience we want. We want some customization instead of a mundane task. But there is an option in Jenkins called Jenkins Shared Library, where we can write our own group code. Now we are using it like a programming language in the Jenkins file.

We only have to call the object and inside that object, we have to call the function or methods we want. Our Jenkins files, which were previously 309 lines were reduced to 220 or 230 lines by only calling the objects and the specific parameters. If I want Java, I will provide Java, so it is going to call the specific stage, defining my library for Java-based code. If it is NTM, it is going to call the different libraries along with the right tools for load-based applications and testing. That was a satisfying experience. As a DevOps team, we spent a lot of time creating good value in the pipeline stream instead of spending all our time copy-pasting the Jenkins file. 

The most valuable aspect of Jenkins is pipeline customization. Jenkins provides a declarative pipeline as well as a scripted pipeline. The scripted pipeline uses a programming language. You can customize it to your needs, so we use Jenkins because other solutions like Travis and Spinnaker don't allow much customization. We can only use the declarative pipelines they provide. 

We can use Jenkins through the GUI and create customized methods. Its GUI is just like Java, so we can make our classes and define our custom methodologies. We can do whatever we want and customize as much as we wish to in any programming language. 

Jenkins is a Java-based solution, and it's a hassle to initially spin up the solution in Java. Jenkins is highly customizable through plugins, but it has limited out-of-the-box capabilities. We have to take advantage of the community configurations available to us. 

And I don't care too much for the Jenkins user interface. It's not that user-friendly compared to other solutions available right now. It's not a great user experience. You can do just fine if you are a techie, but it would take a novice some time to learn it and get things done. 

I used Jenkins extensively this whole year. Prior to that, I was using it for consolidation stuff, but this year I have used it extensively for both installations and DevOps pipelines.

There have been no crashes. I would say that the only important thing is downtime. Since it is a double application, the reboot takes a long time. It would be nice if it took less time to boot. Sometimes it takes around 5 to 10 minutes to boot with all the plugins. It would be great to reduce the maintenance time so that the developers don't even notice when it has been updated. But when we update, we need to announce downtime for that.

We have a master node, and the slave nodes are containers, so it's quite robust and scalable with that plugin for us. Even if we have a lot of jobs running at one time — sometimes it's 30 to 50 jobs running — it's cloud infrastructure. It's going to spin up automatically. The nodes are auto-scaling for the Kubernetes, and you can spin up containers on top of that, so it's quite scalable for us.

We haven't needed Jenkins support yet. 

The initial configuration with Kubernetes is a little bit clunky. Maybe we don't know how to do it because things are ever-evolving, or perhaps there is a right way that we do not know right now. This is one of the pain points. If I have to update my cluster, or there is some disaster recovery mechanism, or I have to add something in the configurations, there is no out-of-the-box tool available in Jenkins.

If I'm going to change my configurations in the conflict maps, it will not reload by itself. I have to add another sidecar container, which always looks for my configuration change updates and adds it into Jenkins. That was my pain point, and that is the same in the initial configuration part that you have to figure out. Jenkins cannot provide you with something out of the box for continuous change and updates. You have to use some third-party plugins for the sidecar containers.

The initial deployment was relatively easy because we used the UI to configure everything. Then there is one part of the configuration code in Jenkins where we have to take the configuration and put it in the conflict map. Whenever we have to change something, we only need to change the configuration map. And it reloads that part. 

The code portion of the configuration is very lengthy, and it isn't easy to figure out what should go into the configuration and what is unnecessary. There is a lot of junk in that. This is not good for the developers to put in their configuration size, but that was their end. Figuring that out takes time. That said, it's a one-person job. You don't need too many people if you know what you are doing.

After installation, Jenkins requires some maintenance, like backup and configurations. If there are some security breaches, Jenkins sends out notifications that you need to update these plugins because there were some security flaws. Sometimes we have to reboot Jenkins to apply these updates, which requires some downtime. Most plugins don't need a reboot, but we have to reboot Jenkins if it involves some core components.

We used the free version. We didn't need anything specific on the support side for that. It's totally customizable, and if you get so much good out of an open-source project, then you don't need to go for any support model. That was quite good, and community support has been good enough for us.

I looked into Travis, and I was primarily looking for customization. Travis wasn't as customizable as Jenkins.

I would rate Jenkins between seven and eight because I'm not that much of a GUI user, so I can use it. And if I have my configurations in place, I don't have to go inside and look at the UI again. It's a good solution for us. 

Jenkins has good plugins and a secure platform.

I have to take the source code, build it, and test it with SonarQube. After passing it, I make the container, and with this container, we deploy to Kubernetes.

Even though you can get into the public cloud, they have to improve the base layer on marketplaces.  

I have been using Jenkins for the past three years.

Jenkins is as stable as the public cloud. 

You have to manually scale Jenkins.

The setup of Jenkins takes a lot of time. Having faster deployment would be helpful.

The time has come for companies to move to containers. I believe that Kubernetes services are based on the customer's needs in a secure manner. People will go with AWS or GCP.

I would rate Jenkins an eight on a scale of one to ten.

We use the solution for the whole automation cycle for the deployments. We are using Jenkins and pipelines for once commits or push commits on Bitbucket or directories. Jenkins is listening for those changes and is applying (or triggered by) the repository changes to deploy and run the test cases, automate test cases, and deploy them on servers for the deployment, testing, or production.

It's open-source and free to use.

The learning curve for Jenkins is not a big deal. It has a lot of community posts and support. 

The initial setup is simple. 

We have found the solution to be stable.

It is my understanding that the solution can scale. 

Jenkins is on-premise (on our infrastructure) and Bitbucket or Azure directories are on the cloud. Therefore, triggering from the repositories to the on-premise, Jenkins is not applicable. We are trying to reach them now, and we are currently using a plan or a process to listen to the repositories every once in a while to know if there are no new changes applied. It triggers the automation for the deployment and the running test cases, and therefore it may take two minutes or three minutes to have the deployment done after the latest commit. This is due to the fact that we are using on-premise Jenkins for on-premise deployment, yet have the repositories on the cloud. There is no way for the cloud repositories to trigger Jenkins. We are trying to research now how to have the Jenkins over a public IP, so the repositories can trigger it.

We have been dealing with Jenkins for around three years now.

The product is stable. There are no bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze. It's reliable. 

Although it is my understanding the solution can scale, we don't have much information about scalability for the Jenkins. We didn't investigate scaling yet.

We tend to search for solutions online. I've never reached out to technical support. I rely more on the community. 

It's pretty straightforward to set up the product. The DevOps team just took around two weeks or three weeks for the first deployment, for automation for the first deployment using Jenkins. It fulfilled our requirements. DevOps is not a target by itself, DevOps is an operation to remove any pain areas, or time-consuming tasks, or to automate it to have it in seconds. It fulfills our requirements.

The product is open-source.

For the development environment, we are using the on-premise infrastructure. For some customers we are also using on-premise; for other customers, we are using the cloud.

We have branches in Egypt and branches in Dubai that are using Jenkins for the whole automation process and we're really enjoying using it.

I would recommend the solution to others.

I'd give it a rating of seven out of ten.