Jenkins, Docker and DevOps: The Innovaon Catalysts
Docker, Jenkins and Connuous Delivery
In just two years, Docker has grown from nothing to more than 100,000 Dockerized applicaons and
close to 1,000 contributors. It has heavily rocked the IT boat and pushed the applicaon architecture
wave around microservices-based designs to a new reality. Lightweight container technologies –
parcularly Docker – are rapidly changing the way we build, deliver and update soware. Docker brings
a new level of simplicity to dening and creang applicaons or services by encapsulang them in
containers. That simplicity lets developers and operaons personnel use Docker containers as a common
currency, eliminang a source of fricon between development and operaons. While Docker is an
amazing success story, the way people use Docker in their development and delivery processes is sll
very much a work in progress. Companies using Docker are discovering how it ts within their own
environments, as well as how to use Docker and Jenkins together most eecvely across their soware
delivery pipelines.
Meanwhile, since its start a decade ago Jenkins has dened what connuous integraon (CI) is all about,
and is now experiencing tremendous acceleraon in adopon as the market moves towards DevOps and
connuous delivery (CD). Both of these trends are all about process automaon, shared goals and the
versioning of everything from code to infrastructure conguraon. The “automaon of everything” plays
to a core strength of Jenkins – its ability to automacally orchestrate any number of processes ulizing
any number of technologies, such as Docker, throughout the soware lifecycle. Jenkins is currently known
to operate on at least 100,000 clusters, 300,000 servers and oers more than 1,000 plugins providing
comprehensive integraon with third-party systems.
As the company helping to drive Jenkins adopon across enterprises, CloudBees
®
has been in the
middle of the excitement and discovery process around how to best leverage containers. This experience
has informed us as to how Jenkins can beer enable people to take advantage of Docker, and how to
transform the excitement in the industry and our hard-won discoveries into concrete features in Jenkins
that make the end-to-end soware delivery process faster, predictable, manageable and drama-free.
That’s what developers and operaons people want.
Let’s take a look at the state of the Docker + Jenkins world today. What does the combinaon bring to the
table and how are people using them together? Then we’ll take a look at what CloudBees and the Jenkins
community have done to make Jenkins the obvious choice to use with Docker to as the foundaon for CI
and CD. Finally, we’ll discuss what remains to be done to complete the vision of a world in which Jenkins
and Docker, together, bring soware development and delivery processes to an enrely new level.