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Jenkins: The Ultimate Tool for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)

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•4 min read
Jenkins: The Ultimate Tool for Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
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Chaitannyaa Gaikwad

Aspiring DevOps Engineer, Certified AWS Solutions Architect - Associate

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) is a software development approach that aims to improve the speed and quality of software delivery. The CI/CD pipeline automates the process of building, testing, and deploying software, allowing teams to deliver new features and bug fixes quickly and efficiently. Jenkins is a popular CI/CD tool that is widely used in the industry.

In this blog, we will discuss the importance of CI/CD and why you should consider using Jenkins to implement it. We will also learn to use Jenkins for automating tasks from the point of a DevOps engineer.

Importance of CI/CD

  1. Faster deployments or delivery: New features and bug fixes can be deployed quickly, allowing organizations to respond to customer needs and market changes more effectively.

  2. Better Quality: Automated testing in the CI/CD pipeline helps to catch errors and bugs earlier in the development process, reducing the risk of issues being introduced into production.

  3. Time-saving: By automating the build and deployment process, developers can get quick feedback to edit the code.

  4. Improved Collaboration: CI/CD promotes collaboration between developers, testers, and operations teams, and improves communication.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD)

CI involves code changes--> build--> Test--> Immediate feedback--> Integration.

CD involves packaging--> deploying to staging--> approval--> deploying to production--> monitoring.

Continuous Delivery Vs Deployment

Deployments and delivery are two important terms in the software development process that are often used interchangeably, but they have different meanings.

Delivery refers to the process of moving software from development to production, while deployment is the process of making software available for use by end users. CI/CD pipelines automate both delivery and deployment processes for efficient software delivery.

What is the CICD pipeline?

A CI/CD pipeline is a series of automated stages that software code goes through to be delivered to end users. It involves building, testing, and deploying code changes automatically, with each stage being triggered by specific events, such as a code commit or successful completion of a previous stage.

The goal of a CI/CD pipeline is to streamline the software development process and ensure that code changes are delivered to users quickly, reliably, and with high quality, which can significantly reduce the time and effort required to deliver software updates.

What is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open-source automation tool used for implementing Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines.

It enables software teams to automate the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes, making the software development process faster, more efficient, and more reliable.

Why use Jenkins?

  1. Open-Source and Free

  2. Extensive Plugin Library to integrate with other tools and services, such as Git, AWS, and Docker.

  3. Easy to Use and Scalable

  4. Active community of users and contributors, providing support and resources to help users get the most out of the tool.

Now Let's start with Jenkins--->

Install and setup Jenkins

Check this blog ---> Install Jenkins

Setup the Jenkins--->

  1. Check your Jenkins is installed successfully:

  2. Access your Jenkins at http://localhost:8080/

  3. Create your first Jenkins job

  4. Now let's deploy an app from the source code.

  5. Let's do some changes to the GitHub repo and commit. then check app is running with changes or not.

This is how Jenkins can automate your code Build-Test-Deploy the application.

Summary:

In this blog, we discussed the importance of implementing Continuous Integration/Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines in software development and the role of Jenkins in automating the process of building, testing, and deploying code changes. CI/CD pipelines enable faster deployments, better quality, time-saving, and improved collaboration.

We also learned the difference between delivery and deployment and the concept of a CI/CD pipeline. Then we discussed the benefits of using Jenkins, such as its open-source nature, extensive plugin library, ease of use, and scalability, and provided a step-by-step guide to setting up and deploying an app using Jenkins. By using Jenkins, software teams can streamline their development process and deliver code changes to end-users quickly and reliably.

I hope you learned something today with me!

Stay tuned for my next blog on the "Jenkins Pipeline Project". I will keep sharing my learnings and knowledge here with you.

Let's learn together! I appreciate any comments or suggestions you may have to improve my blog content.

Thank you,

Chaitannyaa Gaikwad

(19) Chaitannyaa Gaikwad | LinkedIn

#devops#jenkins#trainwithshubham#ci-cd#continuous-integration

Comments (2)

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Divyesh Bhalekar2y ago

hello Chaitannyaa Gaikwad i am following your blog & trying to create this project Integration and Deployment (CI/CD) with Jenkins and ArgoCD can you help me currently i am facing this error

ERROR: Couldn't find any revision to build. Verify the repository and branch configuration for this job. Finished: FAILURE this is another error that i got Got permission denied while trying to connect to the Docker daemon socket at unix:///var/run/docker.sock: Post

can you tell what credential did you add ec2 pem file? i tried adding the pem file content but it kept on still failing how do i resolve it

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Gemma Black3y ago

After a bad experience with Jenkins when I first started web development, I've actively avoided it. But reading through your article, it doesn't seem so bad now. It even looks nicer than I remember.

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Chaitannyaa Gaikwad3y ago

I'm glad that it was able to provide you with a more positive perspective on the tool. I would love to hear more about your past experiences with Jenkins and what made them negative.

Moreover, I am interested in applying my newly acquired knowledge of Jenkins to a practical project to further develop my skills. Could you suggest any project ideas that I could try out with Jenkins? I would greatly appreciate any guidance you can provide. Thank you in advance!

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Gemma Black3y ago

Chaitannyaa Gaikwad It was my second job, and after the main team left who managed Jenkins among other things (and who were exceptionally more senior and advanced than I was), I found it incredibly complex to use as a beginner developer versus something like TravisCI or now GitHub Actions. Because of this complexity, I opted for simpler and easier solutions ever since.

First off, in my first few years of development, I wasn't smart as you to take the time to learn Jenkins. But your tutorial has made me want to revisit it again. So I'm sure I'd be learning from you!

If I were to use it again, I'd use it to split my CI from CD solution. So I'd continue with GitHub Actions for CI to build an artifact, like a containerized image or zip. Then I'd use Jenkins for CD, allowing non-engineering to trigger deployments and move releases through a QA->UAT->pre-prod->production pipeline using a nice GUI interface. I know this can be achieved through GitHub Actions (especially their higher-tiered versions), but with cost-savings, Jenkins now looks like a good solution.

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Chaitannyaa Gaikwad3y ago

Thank you Gemma Black for sharing your experience with Jenkins and your perspective on using it for CI/CD. It's great to hear that my tutorial has inspired you to revisit it again.

Splitting CI/CD solution and using GitHub Actions for CI and Jenkins for CD that sounds like an interesting approach to me. It's always good to explore new ways of doing things and see what works best for our particular use case.

Thank you so much for taking the time to give me such an elaborate response and I will definitely consider using your suggestion as I move forward with my project.Thanks again!

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