Jenkins Certification Training

Continuous Integration (CI) is the development practice where the developers are required to commit source code changes in a shared repository frequently. This way, teams are able to detect bugs early. Continuous Deployment (CD), on the other hand, is a process of a software release in which automated testing is used for validating whether the changes made to the codebase are stable or not for immediate autonomous deployment. Together, CI and CD create a development process called Continuous Software Development (CSD). Some of the most common tools used for CI/CD are Jenkins, Microsoft VSTS, Bamboo, GitLab, Codeship, and Codefresh. Jenkins is the most popular tool that provides support for continuous deployment and delivery. The goal of CSD is to ensure that all the processes are automated. Jenkins can help achieve this goal through various plugins.

It is a popular, open-source tool that has a wide range of plugins. These plugins can be used for extending Jenkins into the developer’s custom tools. Also, Jenkins is very easy to use and has a decent API suite that allows you to customize the amount of data that you can fetch. Even though the tool is free, there are some unpredictable costs associated with Jenkins like the cost of hosting the server as you can’t predict the kind of load the server has to serve. Also, when you are using Jenkins, you can’t see the commits of another member. The lack of collaboration features can cause trouble for the release manager. However, even with all these cons, Jenkins remains one of the most powerful, flexible, and extendable CI/CD tools in the world.

The version of the Jenkins that you use will depend on the POM controls of the plugin. You need to balance features and compatibility.

When you keep the lower version of Jenkins that your plugin builds against, it will allow more users to use your plugin. For example, the LTS Release Line is based on older releases for providing a stable experience for conservative users.

When you use the recent versions of Jenkins that your plugin builds against, you can use API from the plugin and recently-added core features. Also, since features can be moved from core into the plugins, depending on what recent Jenkins version you use, you will be making your plugin’s dependencies on what were the core features explicit. In other cases, the plugin won’t work.

Overall, you must use at least the minimum supported version by the update center that can be found at updates. Jenkins.io.

Here are some of the features offered by the Jenkins for the developers:

• Easy installation - Jenkins is a Java-based, self-contained, platform-agnostic, and ready-to-run tool with packages for Windows, Mac, and Unix-like operating systems.
• Easy configuration - It is very easy to set and configure Jenkins using its web interface, built-in help function, and featuring error checks.
• Available plugins - You can use hundreds of plugins that are available in the Update Center and integrate every tool in the CD and CI toolchain.
• Extensible - You can extend the Jenkins through its plugin architecture. Because of this, there are endless possibilities of what the tool can do.
• Easy distribution - You can distribute work through Jenkins across multiple machines for building, testing, and deploying faster on different platforms.
• Free, Open-source - It is an open-source resource that has the support of a large community.

Here are the advantages of using Jenkins:

• It is user-friendly, open-source, easy to install, and doesn’t need any additional components or installations.
• It is completely free.
• It can be configured easily. Also, modifying and extending Jenkins is easy. You can use it for deploying code instantly, generating test reports, etc. Basically, it can be configured according to the developers’ need for continuous delivery and continuous integration.
• Jenkins is independent of the platforms. It can be used on any platform and operating system whether Windows, Linus, or OS X.
• It has an extensive pool of plugins that makes Jenkins flexible to build, deploy, and automate across different platforms.
• Because Jenkins is a widely-used, open-source tool, you can get easy support from the large online community.
• To ensure that no time is wasted on large-scale, error-ridden integrations, developers can write tests for detecting the errors of the code as soon as possible.
• Issues can be detected and resolved immediately that keep the software in a production-ready state.
• The integration work is mostly automated. So, there are fewer issues related to integration. This saves money and time. 

Jenkins is an open-source automation server used by organizations for accelerating the process of software development by automating it. It is used for managing and controlling software delivery processes during their entire lifecycle, including building, documenting, testing, packaging, staging, deploying, static code analysis, and much more. Jenkins can be set up for watching any code changes in platforms like GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket. It can also be used for building automatically with tools like Gradle and Maven. You can use container technology such as Kubernetes and Docker, start tests, and take actions like rolling forward or rolling back in production.

Originally, it was developed for Continuous Integration (CI). Today, Jenkins can be used for orchestrating the complete software delivery pipeline known as Continuous Delivery. Some organizations extend continuous delivery to continuous deployment. When the Continuous Delivery (CD) is coupled with DevOps culture, it can accelerate software delivery.

Jenkins is a widely adopted Continuous Delivery solution, all thanks to its vibrant, active community and extensibility. There are more than 1,700 plugins that can integrate Jenkins with any tool including the solutions used for the Continuous Delivery processes.

Here are a few reasons behind the popularity of Jenkins: 

• Lowering the efforts of converting CLI into GUI - Users and engineers love the one-button philosophy. This is why many system admins prefer CLI. The implementation of reliable scripts is time-consuming. But, adding UI support took more time. Getting Visual Ops with Jenkins is very easy. All you have to do is wrap the script as a Jenkins Job and the CLU will be converted into the GUI button click. You can also create parameterized Jenkins jobs for obtaining users’ inputs and supporting customization.
• Integrating individual jobs using the Pipeline for a bigger purpose - Single Jenkins jobs are small tools that serve small and simple purposes. But, using the Jenkins pipeline plugin, you can combine different jobs together that serve a bigger problem. The combination can be parallel or sequential.
• Keeping people in sync - Team uses a single, centralized platform for communication. Slack is a popular tool used for this. Now, if Jenkins is used for implementing and triggering critical activities and you add slack integration to Jenkins, team members will be notified of what activities are triggered by whom, when, and what are the results. The best part, it doesn’t require any extra human effort.
• Auditing the previous run - When Jenkins is running jobs, it captures console output for stderr and stdout. Now, when you are troubleshooting, there is a need for human interference for capturing the console output and spending time organizing it. This saves a lot of time. But, for performance tuning, each run takes a long time. With the help of the Timestamper plugin, you can identify the slowest steps for each individual job run.
• Managing projects with more accurate data support - For efficient project management, you need to know about the status of every part. Also, this should be an automated process. Each of these activities can be wrapped as a Jenkins job. Also, Jenkins uses the REST API or SDK for polling these metrics. You can use the Dashboard View plugin for getting solid and accurate data support.

Yes, Jenkins is an open-source automation source that provides hundreds of plugins for supporting, automating, and deploying any project.

For someone who has experience with Continuous Integration, it will take a day or two. Jenkins has a very clean, IMO user interface that performs what it is meant to perform.

If you are a competent developer with no CI experience, it might take you a few days to weeks to grasp the concepts of how your efforts can be automated and how you can integrate other components of your work like issue tracking systems, CVS, etc.

You can take training from an organization like KnowledgeHut that can help understand how the tool works.

Jenkins is a java application that is easy to learn if you are familiar with Continuous Integration. It is best that you take a professional course from a training provider like KnowledgeHut.

Jenkins is an open-source continuous integration server that offers more than 300 plugins for building and testing any project. CloudBees, on the other hand, is to enterprise Jenkins and DevOps. It helps the organizations in the building, testing, and deploying applications to production and utilizing continuous delivery practices. They are focused on Jenkins as a tool in the cloud and on-premises for continuous delivery.

Some of the popular companies that use Jenkins are Facebook, Instacart, and Netflix while the companies that use CloudBees are Netflix, Watchguard Technologies, Inc., ad Randstad.

Jenkins is the open-source standard for managing the development side of DevOps. It can be used from managing source code to delivering code to production. It can be considered as an automation and orchestration engine.

Jenkins is a Continuous Delivery (CD) and Continuous Integration (CI) solution that merges code from developers into a project several times a day and tests it continuously for avoiding downstream problems. CD ensures that the merged code is in a production-ready state. Through Jenkins, developers are able to automate this process up to the point of deployment.