Jenkins vs Kubernetes

Overview

Jenkins

Stacks59.2K

Followers50.4K

Votes2.2K

GitHub Stars24.6K

Forks9.2K

Kubernetes

Stacks61.2K

Followers52.8K

Votes685

Jenkins vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Jenkins and Kubernetes are both popular technologies used in the DevOps and software development world. While they have some similarities, there are key differences that set them apart and make them suitable for different purposes.

Architecture: Jenkins is primarily a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool used for automating the software build, test, and deployment processes. It is based on a master-slave architecture, where a central Jenkins master coordinates and distributes tasks to multiple slave nodes. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that manages and scales containerized applications. It follows a distributed architecture and uses a cluster of worker nodes to deploy and manage containers.
Focus: Jenkins focuses on the CI/CD pipeline and tasks related to building, testing, and deploying software. It provides a wide range of plugins and integrations to support different tools and technologies. On the other hand, Kubernetes focuses on scaling and managing containerized applications in a production environment. It provides features like automatic scaling, load balancing, and container health checks.
Scalability and Resilience: Jenkins can scale horizontally by adding more slave nodes to distribute the workload. However, it does not have built-in mechanisms for automatic scaling and load balancing. On the other hand, Kubernetes is designed to scale and manage containerized applications dynamically. It can automatically scale the number of replicas based on resource usage and distribute the workload across the cluster.
Containerization: Jenkins does not have built-in support for containerization. It can be deployed in containers, but it is not the primary focus. On the other hand, Kubernetes is specifically designed for managing and orchestrating containers. It provides features like container networking, storage management, and service discovery.
Monitoring and Logging: Jenkins provides basic monitoring and logging capabilities but relies on third-party integrations for more advanced functionalities. On the other hand, Kubernetes has built-in monitoring and logging features. It collects metrics and logs from containers and provides a centralized dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting.
Deployment and Rollback: Jenkins supports various deployment strategies like blue-green deployment and can rollback to previous versions if needed. However, it does not have built-in mechanisms for zero-downtime deployment or rolling updates. On the other hand, Kubernetes supports rolling updates and can ensure zero-downtime deployments by gradually updating containers.

In summary, Jenkins and Kubernetes have different focuses and architectures. Jenkins is a CI/CD tool designed for automating software build, test, and deployment processes, while Kubernetes is a container orchestration system designed for managing and scaling containerized applications.

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Manual

Advice on Jenkins, Kubernetes

Simon

Senior Fullstack Developer at QUANTUSflow Software GmbH

Apr 27, 2020

Decidedon

GitHub

GitHub Pages

Markdown

Our whole DevOps stack consists of the following tools:

@{GitHub}|tool:27| (incl. @{GitHub Pages}|tool:683|/@{Markdown}|tool:1147| for Documentation, GettingStarted and HowTo's) for collaborative review and code management tool
Respectively @{Git}|tool:1046| as revision control system
@{SourceTree}|tool:1599| as @{Git}|tool:1046| GUI
@{Visual Studio Code}|tool:4202| as IDE
@{CircleCI}|tool:190| for continuous integration (automatize development process)
@{Prettier}|tool:7035| / @{TSLint}|tool:5561| / @{ESLint}|tool:3337| as code linter
@{SonarQube}|tool:2638| as quality gate
@{Docker}|tool:586| as container management (incl. @{Docker Compose}|tool:3136| for multi-container application management)
@{VirtualBox}|tool:774| for operating system simulation tests
@{Kubernetes}|tool:1885| as cluster management for docker containers
@{Heroku}|tool:133| for deploying in test environments
@{nginx}|tool:1052| as web server (preferably used as facade server in production environment)
@{SSLMate}|tool:2752| (using @{OpenSSL}|tool:3091|) for certificate management
@{Amazon EC2}|tool:18| (incl. @{Amazon S3}|tool:25|) for deploying in stage (production-like) and production environments
@{PostgreSQL}|tool:1028| as preferred database system
@{Redis}|tool:1031| as preferred in-memory database/store (great for caching)

The main reason we have chosen Kubernetes over Docker Swarm is related to the following artifacts:

Key features: Easy and flexible installation, Clear dashboard, Great scaling operations, Monitoring is an integral part, Great load balancing concepts, Monitors the condition and ensures compensation in the event of failure.
Applications: An application can be deployed using a combination of pods, deployments, and services (or micro-services).
Functionality: Kubernetes as a complex installation and setup process, but it not as limited as Docker Swarm.
Monitoring: It supports multiple versions of logging and monitoring when the services are deployed within the cluster (Elasticsearch/Kibana (ELK), Heapster/Grafana, Sysdig cloud integration).
Scalability: All-in-one framework for distributed systems.
Other Benefits: Kubernetes is backed by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), huge community among container orchestration tools, it is an open source and modular tool that works with any OS.

12.8M views12.8M

Comments

Balaramesh

Apr 20, 2020

Needs adviceon

Azure Pipelines

.NET

Jenkins

We are currently using Azure Pipelines for continous integration. Our applications are developed witn .NET framework. But when we look at the online Jenkins is the most widely used tool for continous integration. Can you please give me the advice which one is best to use for my case Azure pipeline or jenkins.

663k views663k

Comments

Anis

Founder at Odix

Nov 7, 2020

Review

I recommend this : -Spring reactive for back end : the fact it's reactive (async) it consumes half of the resources that a sync platform needs (so less CPU -> less money). -Angular : Web Front end ; it's gives you the possibility to use PWA which is a cheap replacement for a mobile app (but more less popular). -Docker images. -Kubernetes to orchestrate all the containers. -I Use Jenkins / blueocean, ansible for my CI/CD (with Github of course) -AWS of course : u can run a K8S cluster there, make it multi AZ (availability zones) to be highly available, use a load balancer and an auto scaler and ur good to go. -You can store data by taking any managed DB or u can deploy ur own (cheap but risky).

You pay less money, but u need some technical 2 - 3 guys to make that done.

Good luck

115k views115k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Jenkins	Kubernetes
In a nutshell Jenkins CI is the leading open-source continuous integration server. Built with Java, it provides over 300 plugins to support building and testing virtually any project.	Kubernetes is an open source orchestration system for Docker containers. It handles scheduling onto nodes in a compute cluster and actively manages workloads to ensure that their state matches the users declared intentions.
Easy installation;Easy configuration;Change set support;Permanent links;RSS/E-mail/IM Integration;After-the-fact tagging;JUnit/TestNG test reporting;Distributed builds;File fingerprinting;Plugin Support	Lightweight, simple and accessible;Built for a multi-cloud world, public, private or hybrid;Highly modular, designed so that all of its components are easily swappable
Statistics
GitHub Stars 24.6K	GitHub Stars -
GitHub Forks 9.2K	GitHub Forks -
Stacks 59.2K	Stacks 61.2K
Followers 50.4K	Followers 52.8K
Votes 2.2K	Votes 685
Pros & Cons
Pros 523 Hosted internally 469 Free open source 318 Great to build, deploy or launch anything async 243 Tons of integrations 211 Rich set of plugins with good documentation Cons 13 Workarounds needed for basic requirements 10 Groovy with cumbersome syntax 8 Plugins compatibility issues 7 Limited abilities with declarative pipelines 7 Lack of support	Pros 166 Leading docker container management solution 130 Simple and powerful 108 Open source 76 Backed by google 58 The right abstractions Cons 16 Steep learning curve 15 Poor workflow for development 8 Orchestrates only infrastructure 4 High resource requirements for on-prem clusters 2 Too heavy for simple systems
Integrations
No integrations available	Vagrant Docker Rackspace Cloud Servers Microsoft Azure Google Compute Engine Ansible Google Kubernetes Engine

What are some alternatives to Jenkins, Kubernetes?

Travis CI

Free for open source projects, our CI environment provides multiple runtimes (e.g. Node.js or PHP versions), data stores and so on. Because of this, hosting your project on travis-ci.com means you can effortlessly test your library or applications against multiple runtimes and data stores without even having all of them installed locally.

Codeship

Codeship runs your automated tests and configured deployment when you push to your repository. It takes care of managing and scaling the infrastructure so that you are able to test and release more frequently and get faster feedback for building the product your users need.

CircleCI

Continuous integration and delivery platform helps software teams rapidly release code with confidence by automating the build, test, and deploy process. Offers a modern software development platform that lets teams ramp.

Rancher

Rancher is an open source container management platform that includes full distributions of Kubernetes, Apache Mesos and Docker Swarm, and makes it simple to operate container clusters on any cloud or infrastructure platform.

Docker Compose

With Compose, you define a multi-container application in a single file, then spin your application up in a single command which does everything that needs to be done to get it running.

TeamCity

TeamCity is a user-friendly continuous integration (CI) server for professional developers, build engineers, and DevOps. It is trivial to setup and absolutely free for small teams and open source projects.

Docker Swarm

Swarm serves the standard Docker API, so any tool which already communicates with a Docker daemon can use Swarm to transparently scale to multiple hosts: Dokku, Compose, Krane, Deis, DockerUI, Shipyard, Drone, Jenkins... and, of course, the Docker client itself.

Drone.io

Drone is a hosted continuous integration service. It enables you to conveniently set up projects to automatically build, test, and deploy as you make changes to your code. Drone integrates seamlessly with Github, Bitbucket and Google Code as well as third party services such as Heroku, Dotcloud, Google AppEngine and more.

wercker

Wercker is a CI/CD developer automation platform designed for Microservices & Container Architecture.

Tutum

Tutum lets developers easily manage and run lightweight, portable, self-sufficient containers from any application. AWS-like control, Heroku-like ease. The same container that a developer builds and tests on a laptop can run at scale in Tutum.

Related Comparisons

Jenkins vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?

Introduction

Architecture: Jenkins is primarily a continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) tool used for automating the software build, test, and deployment processes. It is based on a master-slave architecture, where a central Jenkins master coordinates and distributes tasks to multiple slave nodes. On the other hand, Kubernetes is a container orchestration system that manages and scales containerized applications. It follows a distributed architecture and uses a cluster of worker nodes to deploy and manage containers.
Focus: Jenkins focuses on the CI/CD pipeline and tasks related to building, testing, and deploying software. It provides a wide range of plugins and integrations to support different tools and technologies. On the other hand, Kubernetes focuses on scaling and managing containerized applications in a production environment. It provides features like automatic scaling, load balancing, and container health checks.
Scalability and Resilience: Jenkins can scale horizontally by adding more slave nodes to distribute the workload. However, it does not have built-in mechanisms for automatic scaling and load balancing. On the other hand, Kubernetes is designed to scale and manage containerized applications dynamically. It can automatically scale the number of replicas based on resource usage and distribute the workload across the cluster.
Containerization: Jenkins does not have built-in support for containerization. It can be deployed in containers, but it is not the primary focus. On the other hand, Kubernetes is specifically designed for managing and orchestrating containers. It provides features like container networking, storage management, and service discovery.
Monitoring and Logging: Jenkins provides basic monitoring and logging capabilities but relies on third-party integrations for more advanced functionalities. On the other hand, Kubernetes has built-in monitoring and logging features. It collects metrics and logs from containers and provides a centralized dashboard for monitoring and troubleshooting.
Deployment and Rollback: Jenkins supports various deployment strategies like blue-green deployment and can rollback to previous versions if needed. However, it does not have built-in mechanisms for zero-downtime deployment or rolling updates. On the other hand, Kubernetes supports rolling updates and can ensure zero-downtime deployments by gradually updating containers.

Jenkins vs Kubernetes

Overview

Jenkins vs Kubernetes: What are the differences?