Azure Pipelines vs Jenkins

Jenkins is an application that provides Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery. But what can be the other alternatives to this? Is pipeline overcloud a better option? In this blog, I will be covering Jenkins as a CI/CD tool, similar tools on different cloud platforms, and Azure Pipelines for continuous integration and delivery.

In this blog we are going to cover:

What is Jenkins?
What does Jenkins do?
CI/CD tools on different clouds
What is Azure Pipelines
Azure Pipelines vs Jenkins
Who is the winner?

What Is Jenkins?

Jenkins is an open-source automation tool written in Java with plugins built for Continuous Integration purposes. Jenkins is used for building and testing the software projects continuously making it easier for developers to continuously work on the betterment of the product by integrating changes to the project, and making it easier for users to obtain a fresh build. It also allows you to continuously deliver your software by integrating with a large number of testing and deployment technologies. To know more about Jenkins, you can check out our blog onJenkins Overview and Installation Pre-requisites.

Note : Do Check our Blog on Azure DevOps.

What Does Jenkins Do?

Jenkins is used for implementing the CI/CD workflows. These workflows are called pipelines. Pipelines in turn automate the testing and integrate the separate GitHub branches to the main branch.

Developers do the necessary modifications and commit the changes to the source code.
Then the repository is continuously checked by Jenkins for any changes and if changes are found, then the code is pulled.
A build is performed and an executable is generated if the build process is successful.
If there are no issues related to building integration and testing, it gets deployed to the production server.

Note: Check out Our Post on Veracode.

CI/CD Tools On Different Clouds

There are different tools for CI/CD like Jenkins on different cloud platforms like in Microsoft Azure we get Azure Pipelines and in AWS we get CodePipeline. So why should we put our CI pipelines on the cloud instead of hosting it ourselves?

Reduced Cost –Using cloud services like Azure Pipelines means we don’t have to invest in extra hardware or staffing to build the initial software. This approach costs less, not only in a monetary sense but also concerning time and overhead.
Flexibility – On the cloud, we get a range of infrastructures, databases, and search servers. With a wide range, we get the opportunity of testing our applications on multiple versions of servers. This makes our project more flexible.
Dynamic Scalability – A Cloud’s elasticity lets us scale up or down as per need. That means development teams building new software can start with just the features and computing power they need. This minimizes costs and stops us from over-investing in hardware.
Minimal Configuration –We can reduce the configuration requirements by choosing from a range of default settings available to suit thetype of software you’re developing.

Note: Do Check This Blog on Azure Policy Compliance.

What Is Azure Pipelines

Microsoft Azure is a platform or service of cloud computing, build by Microsoft for various purposes like building Serverless applications on Azure Functions and many more. It is used for testing, building, managing applications, and deploying. Azure Pipelines is a cloud service that you can use to automatically build and test your code project and make it available to other users. It works with just about any language or project type. Azure Pipelines combines continuous integration and delivery to constantly and consistently test and build your code.

Group Tasks – Azure Pipelines allows us to encapsulate a sequence of tasks, already defined in a pipeline, into a single reusable task just like any other task while Jenkins management is generally done by a single user which leads to tracking and accountability problems with the pushed code.
YAML Interface – By using YAML in Azure Pipelines, we can configure CI/CD pipeline as code but there is no YAML interface for the Jenkins pipeline.
Platform, language, and cloud – We can build, test, and deploy Node.js, Python, Java, PHP, Ruby, C/C++, .Net, Android, and iOS apps on Linux, macOS, and Windows and then deploy to on-premise, Azure, AWS and GCP while in case of Jenkins we get Scripted Pipelines that must be programmed in Groovy.
Analytics in Azure Pipelines is provided at the end of each run with parameters like rate and duration of the run while Jenkins doesn’t provide any analytics on the end-to-end deployment cycle. There are plugins for this but they are not enough.
Plugins and Tasks – The built-in plugins available and tasks/extensions can be downloaded from the Azure DevOps marketplace. Jenkins is rich in plugins as it comes with a wide range of plugins. Most of the integration work is automated. Hence fewer integration issues. This saves both time and money but a lot of plugins are either unstable or not straightforward.
Integration of Azure Pipeline with Microsoft products is easy, but configuration changes are required in the pipeline to integrate with non-Microsoft products making it difficult. Jenkins can be easily modified and extended. It deploys code instantly, generates test reports.
Easy support – Since Jenkins is open source and widely used, there is no shortage of support from large online communities of agile teams.

Read More:About AZ 400 Azure DevOps Engineer. Click here

Who Is The Winner?

It all depends on the Team or Project need. We know Jenkins is more flexible to create complex workflows while Azure DevOps is faster to adapt. It’s very rare that a single CI tool will suffice for all scenarios mentioned.
If we decide to use both the tools, then we should know that Azure Pipelines supports integration with Jenkins.

Both of these tools are covered more extensively in our Azure DevOps training program should you be further interested in knowing more about them.

Related/References

[AZ-400] Microsoft Azure DevOps Certification Exam: Everything You Need To Know
[AZ-400] Azure DevOps Certification Path
[DOFD] Jenkins Overview and Installation Pre-requisites.
CI/CD Pipeline | Continuous Integration | Continuous Deployment
[AZ-400] Roles And Responsibilities As An Azure DevOps Engineer
[AZ-400] Microsoft Azure DevOps Training: Step By Step Activity Guides/Hands-On Lab Exercise
[AZ-400] Azure DevOps Services for Beginners
Azure DevOps Environments | How To Setup DevOps Environment | Approval Checks | Azure DevOps Pipeline
[AZ-400] Designing and Implementing Microsoft DevOps Solutions [Official Page]
Branching Strategy DevOps | Git Branching Model | Git Branch Policy | Restoring A Deleted Branch
SonarCloud Azure DevOps | Integrating SonarCloud In Azure

Next Task For You

Begin your journey towardMastering Azure Cloud and landing high-paying jobs. Just click on the register now button on the below image to register for a Free Class on Mastering Azure Cloud: How to Build In-Demand Skills and Land High-Paying Jobs. This class will help you understand better, so you can choose the right career path and get a higher paying job.