Jenkins is an open-source non-stop integration server written in java for orchestrating a sequence of actions to attain the continuous integration technique in an automated style. Jenkins helps the complete improvement lifestyles cycle of software program from constructing, testing, documenting the software program, deploying, and different stages of the software improvement existence cycle.

Jenkins is a widely used application around the world that has around 300k installations and growing day by day. By using Jenkins, software companies can accelerate their software development process, as Jenkins can automate build and test at a rapid rate.

It's far a server-based application and requires a web server like apache tomcat. The purpose Jenkins software program becoming so famous is that of its tracking of repeated responsibilities that arise throughout the development of a challenge. For example, in case your group is developing an undertaking, Jenkins will constantly take a look at your task builds and show you the mistakes in the early stages of your development.

Docker is an open-source containerization platform. It enables developers to package applications into containers—standardized executable components combining application source code with the operating system (OS) libraries and dependencies required to run that code in any environment. Containers simplify the delivery of distributed applications and have become increasingly popular as organizations shift to cloud-native development and hybrid multi-cloud environments.

Developers can create containers without Docker, but the platform makes it easier, simpler, and safer to build, deploy and manage containers. Docker is essentially a toolkit that enables developers to build, deploy, run, update, and stop containers using simple commands and work-saving automation through a single API.

It used to be that when you wanted to run a web application, you bought a server, installed Linux, set up a LAMP stack, and ran the app. If your app got popular, you practiced good load balancing by setting up a second server to ensure the application wouldn't crash from too much traffic.

Below mentioned are some of the benefits of Jenkins:

Jenkins is quite suitable for start-ups as it is completely open-source.

Plugins can be created if one is not available.

It is very adaptable as it allows deploying and automating in different parts with the help of its huge plugin system.

Once configured, it can pull codes from GitHub, BitBucket, whenever a commit is made.

Some of the benefits of Docker are as below:

Easily portable, as after testing, the containerized applications can be deployed to other systems where Docker is running.

It is secured as it gives us complete control over the traffic flow of isolated containers.

It is light, as Docker images are typically small and therefore deployed rapidly, saving a lot of time.

Developers, with the help of Docker, can use multiple versions of the same programming languages.

Promotes standardization for businesses through its consistency in deployment processes and release cycles.

It is entirely scalable as new containers can be created if the application demands them.

Below mentioned are some of the disadvantages of Jenkins:

Jenkins is unable to follow the Salesforce metadata type.

It doesn’t provide visibility into end-to-end metrics.

Customers often face issues related to tracking of changes made by the developer teams.

Since the majority of deployments done by Jenkins happen via single user, tracking deployments becomes difficult.

To minimize system failures, sandboxes are used by a majority of organizations. Jenkins does not provide any supportive frameworks to manage these sandboxes.

Some of the cons of Docker have been explained below:

Data storage is an issue as data inside a container can get erased if the container shuts down.

Speed issues happen as containers consume more resources than virtual machines. If a user is expecting 100 percent bare-metal performance, they need to use bare metals, not containers.

Docker is platform-dependent as it uses virtual machines to run on non-Linux platforms.

Data collection in real-time is more challenging in Docker as the stats command will give you information related to containers, but the same might not help in advanced stages.

In this blog, we will discuss the difference between Jenkins and Docker.

Difference between Jenkins and Docker

Open Source and Free: Developers don’t need to take tension about the money; it is free of cost. It is platform-independent.

Plug-ins and Integration: It is one of the most important features that make it most widely used. It has its type of plug-in, which helps the developer a lot in executing the jobs. Jenkins plug-ins can be developed by anyone and for anyone. Dashboard view plug-in, test analysis plug-in, build pipeline plug-in, and many more like this makes the developer familiar with the Jenkins tool.

Hosting Option: It is yet another important feature of the Jenkins, which can be installed on any operating system like Windows, macOS, Linux, etc. You can also run Jenkins on the cloud by downloading and deploying it on a VM. You can also use a Docker container in it.

Community Support: Jenkins has great support from the developer community. You can assume its popularity and community support that it has more than 1000000 users all over the world, while it was officially published in 2011.

Integration with other CI/CD platforms: Jenkins supports many CI/CD platforms, not only the pipeline. It can make interactions with other tools also. Several plug-ins are available in it, which allows users to make connections with other CI/CD platforms.

Keep your team in sync: Jenkins focuses on a centralized way of working. All the members of the team move in sync.

Easy to debug: It is very easy to find out the errors in the Jenkins. The developer can easily check the bug and resolve it.

Less time to deliver the project: It happens because of its continuous integration feature.

Flexible in creating the jobs: It is very flexible in creating the jobs. It can create jobs both in freestyle and in the pipeline process very easily.

Source Code Management (SCM): Jenkins supports different types of source code repositories like SVN, Git, etc. The developer can set different triggers after making changes in the codes. He can do it every time.

It makes the process of converting in GUI from CLI very easy.

It provides accurate data support to project management.

It supports many languages, like Java, Python, etc.

Following are some cons of the Jenkins tool:

All plug-ins are not compatible with the declarative pipeline syntax.

Jenkins has many plug-ins in its library, but it seems like they are not maintained by the developer team from time to time. This is when it becomes very important that whatever plug-ins you are going to use; are getting a regular update or not.

Lots of plug-ins have a problem with the updating process.

It is dependent on plug-ins; sometimes, you can’t find even basic things without plug-ins.

Jenkins UI is not user-friendly in comparison to current UI Technologies. It cannot be very clear for the first-time user.

Managing of Jenkins dashboard is hard when we have too many jobs to be executed.

Changes made by a developer will not be visible to another developer of the team; only the manager can have its access. It makes tracking difficult in large projects.

Although many plug-ins are available, it does not provide the analytical support in the end to finish the deployment cycle. It leads to the creation of difficulties in the tracking of the project deployment.

The error message is not clear sometimes. It becomes hard to find out what went wrong.

You have to maintain your infrastructure by yourself.

It is not easy to install and configuration the Jenkins tool.

Overview of Jenkins

Jenkins is a continuous integration and transport device. It enables the builders of their development process. There is always a large demand for some improvement and multi-tasking programs. Jenkins is one such tool that could assist builders with code integration and transport centers altogether.

So, as we realize, builders are operating on code development, and there is a repository allocated for their work to save and share among the group. This repository can be git, VSO, Jira, or some other device. Jenkins will make sure that whatever today's commits that take place to the repository do not get spoiled; it runs then and exams if the whole lot is great or no longer. If there may be any form of difficulty related to builds, it has a feature to file the concerned person via electronic mail notification.

Jenkins is developed in Java, and it is an open-source tool. Users who want Jenkins in their system – download Java (either JDK or JRE) in your system before.

A minimum of 256MB of RAM is good to start; prefer more than the mentioned one.

1GB of hard disk space is the minimum requirement; I prefer more than this.

Let us discuss the steps required to install Jenkins.

Step 1: You have to type ‘Jenkins’ on any browser

Step 2: Once you are on the Jenkins website, you will see the ‘Download’ option available in the dashboard. There are 2 types of releases available.

We will use the Long term support link for the Windows platform – the latest version is 2.150.3.

Note– One crucial thing to discuss with our readers is that there are two ways to install the Jenkins application.

Run Jenkins as a service; this starts without any user logging in. Windows installer is the preferred way and also the easiest way to do

If you are an advanced user, you can also download the Jenkins war file and deploy it.

We will continue with the windows installer way – 1st one

Once you click the ‘Download’ button, you will get the below screen, and the download process has begun. After the download has been completed, it navigates to the download location and runs the application.

Step 3: Open the zip file, and you will see the windows installer package in it. Double click and the installation process will start. You can see the Setup window with Jenkins 2.150.3. Follow the below mentioned screen. Click on the ‘Next button.

Step 4: Next screen asks you about the location to save the file. The default location is also mentioned on the screen. If you don’t have any specific reason to change, let it be as it is, refers to the below-mentioned screen.

Step 5:  click the install button to run the process. Refer to the below screen.

Step 6: In the end, you will see the below screen, which says ‘Completed the Jenkin2.150.3 setup. Click the Finish button to stop the install process of Jenkins. After this, you will get an option to open your file; we have to open it via any browser. Let’s see what happens –

And on port ‘localhost8080’, you will see the below screen. The first screen is of the localhost8080 address, and the second is the message you will get.

Step 7: Now first thing in order to unlock Jenkins is ‘Password’; yes, you need to provide the initial admin password. So let’s see how we can do this. And the password is set in this directory.

Directory: /var/lib/Jenkins/secrets/initialAdminPassword

Just copy the following details and paste them into your folder explorer directory. Let’s see how we can do this. I have copied “/var/lib/Jenkins/secrets” and paste it into the folder explorer. Follow the below screen for a better understanding

A user has to open the initialadminpassword by clicking on it. It is highlighted in the above screen with a red rectangle. Open it with your editor (like Notepad or Notepad ++). 

Step 8: Copy this password and paste it into the Jenkins window opened in the browser.

I have pasted my password, and click Continue.

Step 9: Now in the next screen, we will get ‘Customize Jenkins’ screen. Again there are 2 options for the users to prefer.

We will choose the first option, as it is the most used list of plugins preferred by the community members. Also, if you have any specific purpose then only prefers the 2nd option.

With this, the recommended plugins will start to download. Let’s see the related screen.

The above is the suggested install screen. We can see that there are so many useful things that are coupled together. It has the plug-ins for Git, LDAP, SSH Slaves. Once all the plugins are successfully installed on your Jenkins you will be automatically redirected.

Once the details are provided click on ‘Save and Finish’ button. Which means Jenkins is installed properly and it is ready to start.

Step 11: A few last but crucial works have to be done. Once the above screen appears in front of you, you have to open the folder where the Jenkins folder is present (in your local system). Just go to C drive and Program file settings and search for ‘Jenkins’ folder.

This is how we will install Jenkins in our local system. Before we wrap this important discussion with our readers let us see what Jenkins can do for its users. We have presented some key responsibilities of Jenkins –

Highly rich set of plugins with complete documentation

In this blog, we will discuss how to install Jenkins.

Install Jenkins

Jenkins Email Notifications are the way to notify based on an event that occurred or some action that happened. Jenkins email notifications are the kind of message that is automatically sent to you and update that, there has been activity on one of your social media accounts like Google, slack. As email is the primary means of notification among other social media for Jenkins email notifications. Jenkins provided a plugin to extend the functionality of e-mail notifications. It’s informing the user about some event or status or any information that needs to be updated to their concerned users.

Given below are the 3 parts of Jenkins email notification:

Triggers: This is a defined condition that causes an e-mail notification to be sent.

Content: Defined content for email subject and body.

Recipients: We can mention the concerned user who is supposed to receive an e-mail when an event occurred.

Any organization follows the DevOps practice and configured Jenkins as part of their build process. DevOps team wants to configure a process and as part of the process to send an automated email to the Developers team if any build failure with the help of freestyle configurations. To send and receive emails we need to configure email servers in Jenkins. Basically in an organization, they have their email servers that are used to trigger. Emails, in our example we do not have our server, so we are going to use a Gmail SMTP server.

After successful installation of Jenkins, it comes with several built-in functionalities and several plugins like mail sending. Just we need to configure any plugins or email sending plugins with defined necessary values as in case of the email what SMTP server expected.

When the Jenkins email notification triggers, that is an event under which the event occurred and was sent to the respective recipients. For an Automated build job, there are many events such as success, failure, abort, and so on. After clicking on the triggers option is a selection of required event for which mail need to trigger. Once all the changes are made, save the configurations.

Go to the Jenkins home page and click the ‘Manage Jenkins’ menu option. Then, select the ‘Configure System’ option.

Go to the E-mail notification section and enter the required SMTP server and user email-suffix details. Click the ‘Advanced’ button and then click the checkbox next to the ‘Use SMTP Authentication’ option. Now, set the following fields.

We have to provide SMTP server details in the respective textbox, click on the advanced button, and below we have fields to be given to configure the SMTP server settings. Please find the below details to configure the email server.

Under E-mail Notification, put the mentioned details below:

To verify the email notification functionality by clicking the checkbox below to the ‘Test configuration by sending Test e-mail recipient’ option.

Enter a valid email id and click the ‘Test configuration’ button to check whether the email id is valid or not.

Checking on the box that is used for SMTP Authentications, to provide the user credentials for the SMTP account.

Configure Jenkins job to trigger an email if the build fails.

Open your job → Configure → Post Build Actions → Add post-build action → email notification

Under Recipients put team’s mail id and save the configuration.

After the successful configuration click on the build now option to trigger the build. Based on the build event that occurred like success or failure, the server sends mail to notify.

We can get the build failure notification as a failure event occurred at the Jenkins server.

Find the use case to send email notifications automatically with the Pipeline script.

Let’s suppose in any organization, it follows the DevOps practice and configured Jenkins as part of their build process. DevOps team wants to configure a process and as part of the process to send an automated email to the Developers team if the build is successful.

Configure Jenkins pipeline script job to trigger an email if build success.

git 'https://github.com/Smaheshwar85/easeWithbase'

defmvnHome =  tool name: 'Mavan3', type: 'maven'

mail bcc: '', body: '''Build successful!!!!

Mahesh''', cc: '', from: '', replyTo: '', subject: 'Build successfull', to: 'smahesh2305@gmail.com'

If your build is getting failed and you can see the below error stack trace in the console.

534 5.7.14 https://support.google.com/mail/answer/78754 p10sm11420422qkm.121 – gsmtp

at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport$Authenticator.authenticate(SMTPTransport.java:809)

at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.authenticate(SMTPTransport.java:752)

at com.sun.mail.smtp.SMTPTransport.protocolConnect(SMTPTransport.java:669)

at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:317)

at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:176)

at javax.mail.Service.connect(Service.java:125)

at javax.mail.Transport.send0(Transport.java:194)

at javax.mail.Transport.send(Transport.java:124)

at hudson.tasks.MailSender.run(MailSender.java:130)

at hudson.tasks.Mailer.perform(Mailer.java:176)

at hudson.tasks.Mailer.perform(Mailer.java:139)

at hudson.tasks.BuildStepMonitor$1.perform(BuildStepMonitor.java:20)

at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.perform(AbstractBuild.java:741)

at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.performAllBuildSteps(AbstractBuild.java:690)

at hudson.model.Build$BuildExecution.post2(Build.java:186)

at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.post(AbstractBuild.java:635)

at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1881)

at hudson.model.FreeStyleBuild.run(FreeStyleBuild.java:43)

at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:97)

at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:428)

In this blog, we will discuss Jenkins Email Notification

Jenkins Email Notification

Let's know about Jenkins Backup in brief :

Jenkins is a popular open-source automation server that is widely used for continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). It is essential to take regular backups of the Jenkins data and configurations to ensure the availability and reliability of the system. In case of any disaster, a backup can help to restore the system quickly.

Here are the steps to perform backup and restore in Jenkins:

2. Locate the Jenkins home directory. By default, it is located in $JENKINS_HOME.

3. Copy the entire Jenkins home directory to a safe location or create a compressed archive of it.

2. Copy the backed-up Jenkins home directory to the original location.

Here are some additional tips and best practices for Jenkins backup and restore:

Use a separate backup location that is not on the same system as Jenkins. This ensures that the backup data is not lost in case of system failure.

If your Jenkins instance is running on a cloud-based platform, make sure that the backup data is stored in a different cloud-based storage solution to avoid data loss in case of a cloud provider outage.

Consider backing up the Jenkins configuration files separately from the build artifacts and job data. This can help to reduce the backup size and make the restore process faster.

Test the restore process periodically to ensure that it is working correctly. You can use a test Jenkins instance to restore the backup and verify that all the data and configurations are restored correctly.

Keep track of the backup and restore operations in a log file. This can help you to troubleshoot any issues that may arise during the backup or restore process.

Use a version control system to manage your Jenkins configuration files. This ensures that you can track changes to your configuration files over time and roll back to a previous version if necessary.

Use a backup retention policy to manage your backups. This policy specifies how many backups to keep and for how long. For example, you might keep daily backups for a week, weekly backups for a month, and monthly backups for a year.

Encrypt your backups to ensure that sensitive data is not exposed. You can use tools like GPG or OpenSSL to encrypt your backups.

Create a disaster recovery plan that outlines the steps to be taken in case of a catastrophic failure. This plan should include the backup and restore procedures, as well as the steps to be taken to restore the system to full operation.

Keep your Jenkins server up to date with the latest security patches and updates to ensure that your backup data is not compromised.

By following these best practices, you can ensure that your Jenkins instance is always backed up and that you can quickly restore it in case of any disaster or system failure. Additionally, having a disaster recovery plan in place can help to minimize the impact of any downtime on your organization.

Having good backups of your Jenkins instance is critically important, backups are used for Disaster recovery, recovering an older configuration, etc.

Jenkins Backup and Restore

Kubernetes has become the de facto standard for container orchestration, providing scalability and resilience for modern applications. Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) is a managed Kubernetes service offered by AWS, simplifying the deployment and management of Kubernetes clusters. Jenkins, a popular continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool, can be integrated with EKS to automate the deployment of Kubernetes applications. In this blog, we will explore how to deploy Kubernetes applications in Amazon EKS using Jenkins.

An active AWS account with permissions to create and manage resources in EKS.

A Jenkins server with necessary plugins installed, such as the Kubernetes plugin, AWS Steps plugin, and AWS CLI plugin.

Basic familiarity with Kubernetes concepts and Jenkins CI/CD pipelines.

Create an Amazon EKS cluster using the AWS Management Console or AWS CLI. Follow the AWS documentation for detailed instructions.

Retrieve the Kubernetes configuration file (kubeconfig) for the EKS cluster.

Install the Kubernetes plugin in Jenkins to enable communication with the EKS cluster.

Configure Jenkins to use the kubeconfig file by adding it as a Kubernetes configuration in the Jenkins Global Configuration.

Set up the AWS credentials in Jenkins to allow interaction with AWS services.

Define the pipeline script in the Jenkinsfile, which describes the steps to deploy the Kubernetes application.

The pipeline script typically includes steps like checking out source code, building Docker images, pushing the images to a container registry, and deploying the application to the EKS cluster.

Use the Kubernetes plugin to configure the Jenkins agents to run the pipeline steps in Kubernetes pods, ensuring they have access to the necessary resources in the EKS cluster.

Step 4: Deploying the Kubernetes Application

Define the Kubernetes deployment manifest for the application, specifying details like container images, resource requirements, and ports.

Add a deployment step in the Jenkins pipeline to apply the Kubernetes deployment manifest using the kubectl command.

Use the Kubernetes plugin to create and manage Kubernetes resources like pods, services, and ingress rules from within the pipeline script.

Implement monitoring and logging solutions to gain insights into the deployed application. Tools like Prometheus and Grafana can be integrated with EKS for monitoring and visualization.

Implement scaling strategies using Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) or Cluster Autoscaler to automatically adjust the number of pods based on CPU or custom metrics.

In this blog, we explored how to deploy Kubernetes applications in Amazon EKS through Jenkins. By integrating Jenkins with EKS, you can automate the deployment process, ensuring consistent and reliable deployments of your applications. The use of a Jenkins pipeline allows for the creation of a streamlined CI/CD workflow, incorporating steps for building, testing, and deploying Kubernetes applications. With the power of EKS and Jenkins combined, you can achieve efficient, scalable, and automated deployments for your Kubernetes applications.

Deploy Kubernetes applications in Amazon EKS with Jenkins for streamlined CI/CD, leveraging automation and scalability for efficient software delivery.

Deploying Kubernetes Applications in Amazon EKS through Jenkins

I am trying to delete all the resources of a deployed micro service like Deployments, services, PVC's and PV's associated with a helm release using the "jx step helm delete {release_name} -n {vz1-db-backup}".

This deletes all the resources except the PV's. And I am unable to use the traditional kubernetes commands in the Jenkinsfile to delete the PV's.

Please let me know the jx command to delete PV's.

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Trending Blogposts on jenkinsx

Difference between Jenkins and Docker

Overview of Jenkins

Install Jenkins

Jenkins Email Notification

Jenkins Backup and Restore

Deploying Kubernetes Applications in Amazon EKS through Jenkins

Popular Discussions on jenkinsx

openjx command to delete the PV's (Persistent Volumes) associated with a helm release

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