Why You Need to Know About Jenkins X

AllDayDevOps is right around the corner and Jenkins X will be at the top of mind for teams who want to do continuous integration/continuous delivery of cloud native applications on Kubernetes.

I’ll give you the brief run-down about Jenkins X in this blog post.

Jenkins X is an open source project that integrates the best-of-breed tools in the Kubernetes ecosystem to provide an opinionated CI/CD solution for cloud native applications on Kubernetes. It automatically guides the development and delivery workflow that ships cloud native applications from dev/test to staging to production.

The platform jumpstarts you with language packs that write the sample app in the language of your choice, containerizes it and commits the Dockerfile to an integrated Git repo, along with the Jenkinsfile, Helm charts and Skaffold workflow. These quickstarts get you started in minutes and radically improves the time it takes for a new hire to ship their first line of code.

Jenkins X also demonstrates GitOps , where environments like staging and production are Git repos. Automatic promotion of apps from one environment to another happens via pull requests and Jenkins pipelines. GitOps vastly improves auditability and paves the way for an automated approach to segregation of duties (SoD). Jenkins X leverages the managed Kubernetes solutions provided by major cloud providers so that teams do not have to setup and manage Kubernetes on their own.

Finally, Jenkins X rests on a light-weight and yet powerful command line tool called jx . Jx lets teams create a new Kubernetes cluster and an app in minutes and then deliver that app all the way to production. It lets folks leverage their existing cluster and import existing apps if they own pre-existing assets. This prescriptive approach works well for a large cross-section of the population who are happy with the defaults. However, Jenkins X addresses the need for customization through jx for teams who need to tailor their experience and don’t like to be boxed in.

Overall, my talk sharpens the concepts that ensure continuity of our release processes. My personal DevOps journey has been rewarding and I sincerely hope that you can join me and all the other thought citizens at AllDayDevOps this year. This is one of the very few global conferences where it doesn’t cost us anything to attend and yet AllDayDevOps leaves no stone unturned in lighting up our day! Even if you can’t attend every session during the entire 24 hours, you can listen to the recordings afterwards. If you haven’t registered for the conference yet, you can do so here . So, be online with your friends and co-workers. I have spoken at this conference before, and as a repeat offender, I can safely say that on Oct 17, 2018, the world will witness a global “DevOps-ification.” So, gear up, since all of us at CloudBees will!

Update: Listen to the live recording of my Jenkins X talk here.

Additional resources

Read the new ebook about building cloud native apps using Jenkins X and Kubernetes.

Determine how Kubernetes and Jenkins X go hand-in-hand.

Learn how CloudBees can help you measure DevOps performance in this webinar.