Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees Automatically Detects and Recovers from Jenkins Failures, Avoiding Schedule Slip in Application Development Projects and Saving Hours for Administrators
WOBURN, MA. and NEW YORK CITY - May 17, 2012 - CloudBees, Inc. , the Java Platform as a Service (PaaS) innovation leader, announced at the Jenkins User Conference in New York City today new high availability functionality now available within Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees. Enhancements included in the release focus on ensuring Jenkins uptime, increasing governance/oversight and improving productivity for developers and Jenkins administrators.
High availability and productivity benefits are delivered via a series of new plugins:
High Availability plugin, provides error detection and automated recovery capabilities
Custom Update Center plugin, a central update center containing approved plugin versions
Validated Merge plugin, ensures only code that won't break the build is checked in
Secure Copy plugin, quickly and securely transfers jobs between Jenkins masters
Fast Archiving plugin, compresses build archives
High Availability
Today, if a Jenkins instance goes down, the impact is usually several hours of downtime from the time the crash is detected until the time the server can be restarted. Large development projects push Jenkins resources to the max and unplanned downtime can cost the equivalent of days of lost time. With the new High Availability plugin installed, a standby Jenkins master automatically detects the machine failure and steps up to take over the failed instance. The build is recovered and restarted in minutes. Automatic detection of failure and recovery ensures development activities can continue - despite a crash.
Another point of failure in a project is due to usage by development team members of different - and incompatible -- versions of plugins. With the new Custom Update Center plugin , Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees customers can set up their own update center, containing the approved versions of plugins and binaries for developers to use. This ensures all teams are using the same plugin versions, preventing errors that can occur when, for example, development is done with one version of a plugin and testing is performed with a different version of the same plugin. Additionally, administrators have better governance throughout the enterprise by ensuring plugin versioning standards.
A third point of failure within a Jenkins project occurs when code is checked into the main repository that breaks the build. With the Validated Merge plugin , Jenkins acts as a gatekeeper to the Git repository, only accepting code changes that build successfully. Gone are the days when developers could break the build and bring the entire project to a halt, while the problem code was triaged and fixed. Now development teams can work continuously and only the developer with the errant code is impacted.
Automation of Other Project-Related Tasks
Two other plugins, Secure Copy and Fast Archiving, help speed tasks that are currently manual and/or time-consuming. The Secure Copy plugin securely and automatically transfers archives between jobs on different Jenkins masters. For example, the handing off of project artifacts from a development team master to a production team master. Finally, the Fast Archive plugin conserves network bandwidth and speeds up builds by compressing build archives that are transferred from a Jenkins slave to a master.
"I'm glad that Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees now addresses the availability and productivity concerns that arise when Jenkins becomes mission critical for companies. This new set of plugins lets development teams rely more heavily on Jenkins automation and frees them up to focus on the things that can't be automated - like creating a design spec or writing code," said Kohsuke Kawaguchi, founder of the Jenkins project, and elite developer and architect at CloudBees. "I look forward to using the Validated Merge plugin myself so that other developers are not impacted by me accidentally breaking the build - which was the reason I built Jenkins in the first place."
"We heard from Jenkins administrators that improving availability of service and providing the ability to host update centers in their organization were critical components to ensuring maximum uptime," said Harpreet Singh, senior director, product management, CloudBees. "Now we have built high availability into Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees, improving productivity for developers and making the lives of Jenkins administrators a little easier."
For more information on Jenkins Enterprise by CloudBees, or to try out the new plugins for free for 30 days, visit: https://cloudbees.com/jenkins-enterprise-by-cloudbees.cb
About CloudBees
CloudBees (cloudbees.com ) turbo-charges the way Java applications are built and deployed to meet the rapid pace of business in an on-line and increasingly mobile world. By eliminating the friction caused by provisioning, maintaining and administering complex hardware and software infrastructure, we streamline and accelerate the entire Java application lifecycle from development to deployment. The CloudBees platform provides a set of rich services that are easily consumed by developers allowing them to rapidly build and deploy new business applications with zero IT administrative overhead. Our AnyCloud Service Architecture enables those applications to be easily deployed to any public, regional or enterprise cloud environment. CloudBees serves the needs of a wide range of businesses from small startups that want to focus on quickly creating new on-line businesses to large IT organizations that need to rapidly respond to new business application projects.
Backed by Matrix Partners and Lightspeed Venture Partners, CloudBees was founded in 2010 by former JBoss CTO Sacha Labourey and an elite team of middleware and open source technology professionals.
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