I really like the one-click deployment feature of cloudbees jenkins and would like to use it for my own deployments.
Since i'm not running on run#cloud, is it possible to configure a shell script as a way of deployment or implement a custom plugin to hook into this feature?
I have my own jobs that do the deployment. The easiest deploy jobs just call a shell script. Works as a charm and the jobs do everything I need. I can start them from a another job. They are super flexible since I can add as many parameters as I want for the deployment. The only shortcoming is, that I don't have that nifty looking link but I can life without it.
Depending on the tools that you are usign, for example in my case I use sbt and I think you can add a task on sbt to deploy to a non cloudbees server.
Related
I am in a process of configuring Jenkins to deploy artifacts. I only need apache ant and java to create artifacts(both are available on the host machine) and no other external libraries. So, I think using Maven will make it unnecessarily complex as I have only 2 ant files. I want to keep it as simple as possible.
What I want to achieve is:
1. Trigger a Jenkins job 'A' to build the artifact and deploy it to nexus repository.
2. Trigger another Jenkins Job 'B' to take same artifact generated in in step above and deploy it to target environment.
Can anyone please help me to identify challenges with my approach and share some useful links to achieve what I have specified.
A short answer is Yes you can. Each of the component you mentioned can be used individually and can be integrated into your build pipeline. TBH, your use case isn't one off and can be easily done if you start here.
I have recently started to mess about with Jenkins and am unsure how to deploy my web app to a basic server. I've gotten into the Pipeline (https://jenkins.io/doc/book/pipeline/) and it seems like a fantastic way to work.
Where I'm a bit stuck is in two spots:
Once my repo is in my workspace within Jenkins, how do I prep it so I am only deploying the files necessary for the application? For example, I don't need my src/ directory or my Vagrantfile when I'm deploying things.
How do I deploy my app to the server? I see examples all over the place, but I am getting a bit lost since there seems to be so many ways to do this. I'm assuming scp or something like that...?
To build off of #2, is there a way to deploy web apps as transactions (in one shot) rather than file-by-file?
Please let me know if I can provide any information for potential answers!
I can't speak to your specific use case but a common way to do this is the build-and-deploy model, where you will have 2 Jenkins jobs. The "build" job will check out from source, run build commands such as maven or make, and lastly will "archive" the build artifacts. The latter is an option under the 'post-build actions' tab at the bottom.
In the "deploy" job, you will grab the artifacts of your choice. You can fetch a single file, all of them, and everything in between. This requires use of the 'Copy Artifact' plug-in and it allows you to copy files generated by other jobs. Now you can run your usual deploy script in the 'Execute Command' box. Most command line paradigms are supported out of the box such as setting environment variables.
The instructions above assume that you want to run your application off of a host that you've provisioned as a Jenkins slave.
Use artifacts as mentioned by Paul Back, or a 3rd party artifactory server as in video
This is always tricky and error-prone. Why not spin up a fresh server with new release (humanly verified once)
Jenkins & Ansible is the answer here. This is how I deploy to production, since I am in no need to use anything like Docker (too many issues with particular app) so have to run the app natively. Quick example would be
You monitor a specific branch in gitlab / github or whatever else and then call a webhook on push / merge etc on that branch, at this point you deal with anything you need to do by running a playbook on the jenkins job that monitors that branch (jenkins).
in my case jenkins and ansible run on the same server. Jenkins runs the ansible playbook that does whatever I need to do.
for example with ansible, I copy certain files that need to be there, run configs / change filenames etc. setup nginx, run composer,
you get the point.
I feel it's a little crazy I couldn't find anything along these lines, especially as it's an incredibly simple requirement: Is there a way you can deploy from Jenkins using SSH/SCP, yet write only one instance of a transfer-set/exec script?
As it stands, deploying to servers is kind of INSANE in that I need to create a new "Deploy to SSH" task, choose a different server from the drop down and then copy/past all transfer-sets and execs from the previous entry. Then do it again. And again. And again.
There must be a better way?
This may not be a short-term immediate solution for your question---
(On long run this can be used)
Your requirement seems to me like you need a configuration management equipment. You could use Chef, Puppet or Ansible. And automation of this deployment can be done using Jenkins CI.
One example of how to deploy an application on jboss using Ansible -
Deploy a hello world application
jboss: src=/tmp/hello-1.0-SNAPSHOT.war deployment=hello.war state=present
Of course, this will require installation of Ansible and little bit of initial configuration. Ansible is simplest of all deployment mechanisms.
Check this for more details - http://docs.ansible.com/ansible/intro.html
Recently, in our company, we decided to use Ansible for deployment and continuous integration. But when I started using Ansible I didn't find modules for building Java projects with Maven, or modules for running JUnit tests, or JMeter tests.
So, I'm in a doubtful state: it may be I'm using Ansible in a wrong way.
When I looked at Jenkins, it can do things like build, run tests, deploy. The missing thing in Hudson is creating/deleting an instance in cloud environments like AWS.
So, in general, for what purposes do we need to use Ansible/Jenkins? For CI do I need to use a combination of Ansible and Jenkins?
Please throw some light on correct usage of Ansible.
First, Jenkins and Hudson are basically the same project. I'll refer to it as Jenkins below. See How to choose between Hudson and Jenkins?, Hudson vs Jenkins in 2012, and What is the most notable difference between Jenkins and Hudson from a user perpective? for more.
Second, Ansible isn't meant to be a continuous integration engine. It (generally) doesn't poll git repos and run builds that fail in a sane way.
When can I simply use Jenkins?
If your machine environment and deployment process is very straightforward (such as Heroku or iron that is configured outside of your team), Jenkins may be enough. You can write a custom script that does a deploy as the final build step (or a chained step).
When can I simply use Ansible?
If you only need to "deploy" without needing to build/test, Ansible might be enough. For instance, you can run a deploy from the commandline or using Ansible Tower. This is great for small projects, static sites, etc.
How do they work together?
A good combination is to use Jenkins to build, test, and save artifacts. Add a step to call Ansible or Ansible Tower to handle the actual deployment process. That allows Ansible to handle machine configuration and lets Jenkins handle the CI process.
What are the alternatives to Jenkins?
I strongly recommend Thoughtworks Go (not to be confused with Go the language) instead of Jenkins. Others include CruiseControl, TravisCI, and Integrity.
Ansible is just a "glorified SSH loop".
CI is not only the software running, but the whole process of how success and failure is handled, who gets notification, and how the change is merged into the target version control.
If we only focus on the software, CI is a reactive scheduler triggered by code changes, and triggering typical build-validate-release-deploy sequence of "steps".
So in respect of software, Ansible without additional "sugaring" is just a toolkit to run things, which can be those very steps, but it is not CI.
The Ansible (without tower) totally lacks this reactive nature.
If you want to marry Ansible with CI, you can.
Ansible tower is a very Ansible oriented scheduler, but if you need CI software, I think you not necessarily need it. Any CI app capable of running shell script would be capable to launch Ansible playbooks.
Yet unlike Ansible tower - CI tools know to display test reports of all test frameworks, trigger notifications, etc.
Ansible tower can make sense in a complex environment with lots of groups touching Ansible code... The truth is I haven't seen a single real reason to pay for it. But if a manager liked the web interface nothing can stand "but others use it" logic.
I suspect the concept of Ansible tower was in response to puppet enterprise.
:)
I'm running Jenkins on one server and want to use chef and automatically install a snapshot (including runtime artifacts etc) on a separate server.
Currently Jenkins will use ssh to invoke chef on the seperate machine. Is there a better way?
Maven is also involved in this.
I've found that majority of "Deploy" type plugins are lacking in customization. We use "Execute" (bash or batch) build steps to trigger deployment scripts on remote machines (written in house, be they Puppet, Chef, or plain bash/batch).
The correlation between builds and deployments is achieved through "Promotions" and explained in detail here:
How to promote a specific build number from another job in Jenkins?