Jenkins X vs Spinnaker

Overview

Spinnaker

Stacks233

Followers358

Votes14

GitHub Stars9.6K

Forks1.2K

Jenkins X

Stacks147

Followers370

Votes16

GitHub Stars4.7K

Forks800

Jenkins X vs Spinnaker: What are the differences?

Introduction

When comparing Jenkins X and Spinnaker, several key differences stand out between these two popular tools for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).

Architecture: Jenkins X is built on top of Jenkins and Kubernetes, providing an opinionated CI/CD solution specifically designed for cloud-native applications. On the other hand, Spinnaker is a standalone platform that supports a wider range of deployment targets, including Kubernetes, VMs, and serverless environments. This difference in architecture impacts the flexibility and scalability of each tool in different deployment scenarios.
Pipeline Orchestration: Jenkins X focuses on GitOps and automates the entire software delivery process, from source code to production, through its integrated pipeline orchestration. In contrast, Spinnaker offers a more customizable pipeline model, allowing users to define and manage complex deployment workflows across multiple environments with support for canary deployments and automated rollbacks. The level of control and granularity in pipeline orchestration differs significantly between the two tools.
Community and Ecosystem: Jenkins X has a strong community presence and extensive plugin ecosystem due to its ties with the Jenkins community, making it easier for users to extend and customize their CI/CD processes with additional features. On the other hand, Spinnaker boasts a vibrant community of cloud-native and DevOps practitioners, with contributions from major tech giants like Google and Netflix, resulting in a rich ecosystem of integrations and extensions for advanced deployment strategies.
Native Kubernetes Support: Jenkins X is tailored for Kubernetes-native applications, providing out-of-the-box support for building, testing, and deploying containerized workloads on Kubernetes clusters. In comparison, Spinnaker offers robust Kubernetes integration but also supports other deployment targets, giving users the flexibility to manage hybrid or multi-cloud environments with ease. The level of Kubernetes-centric features and support varies between Jenkins X and Spinnaker.
Deployment Strategies: Jenkins X focuses on promoting best practices in cloud-native CI/CD, such as continuous integration, automated testing, and versioned releases, emphasizing speed and stability in the deployment process. In contrast, Spinnaker emphasizes flexible deployment strategies, enabling users to implement canary deployments, blue/green deployments, and automated rollbacks seamlessly across different environments, promoting a more sophisticated approach to continuous delivery.
User Experience and Learning Curve: Jenkins X simplifies the setup and configuration process for CI/CD pipelines by offering a more guided and opinionated user experience that streamlines tasks like creating repositories, configuring environments, and automating deployments. Conversely, Spinnaker has a steeper learning curve due to its extensive feature set and complexity, requiring users to invest more time in mastering the tool's capabilities for advanced deployment scenarios. The ease of use and learning curve differ significantly between Jenkins X and Spinnaker.

In Summary, Jenkins X and Spinnaker offer distinct approaches to CI/CD, with Jenkins X focusing on simplicity, Kubernetes-native workflows, and GitOps principles, while Spinnaker provides a more robust, customizable platform for managing complex deployment strategies across diverse environments and deployment targets.

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CLI (Node.js)

Manual

Advice on Spinnaker, Jenkins X

Stratos

Jan 13, 2020

Needs advice

We are a mid-size startup running Scala apps. Moving from Jenkins/EC2 to Spinnaker/EKS and looking for a tool to cover our CI/CD needs. Our code lives on GitHub, artifacts in nexus, images in ECR.

Drone is out, GitHub actions are being considered along with Circle CI and GitLab CI.

We primarily need:

Fast SBT builds (caching)
Low maintenance overhead (ideally serverless)
Everything as code

Ease of use

181k views181k

Comments

Detailed Comparison

Spinnaker	Jenkins X
Created at Netflix, it has been battle-tested in production by hundreds of teams over millions of deployments. It combines a powerful and flexible pipeline management system with integrations to the major cloud providers.	Jenkins X is a CI/CD solution for modern cloud applications on Kubernetes
-	Automated CI and CD - Rather than having to have deep knowledge of the internals of Jenkins Pipeline, Jenkins X will default awesome pipelines for your projects that implements fully CI and CD; Environment Promotion via GitOps - Each team gets a set of Environments. Jenkins X then automates the management of the Environments and the Promotion of new versions of Applications between Environments via GitOps; Pull Request Preview Environments - Jenkins X automatically spins up Preview Environments for your Pull Requests so you can get fast feedback before changes are merged to master; Feedback on Issues and Pull Requests - Jenkins X automatically comments on your Commits, Issues and Pull Requests with feedback as code is ready to be previewed, is promoted to environments or if Pull Requests are generated automatically to upgrade versions
Statistics
GitHub Stars 9.6K	GitHub Stars 4.7K
GitHub Forks 1.2K	GitHub Forks 800
Stacks 233	Stacks 147
Followers 358	Followers 370
Votes 14	Votes 16
Pros & Cons
Pros 14 Mature Cons 3 No GitOps 1 Configuration time 1 Management overhead 1 Ease of use	Pros 7 Kubernetes integration 5 Scripted Pipelines 4 GitOps Cons 1 Complexity
Integrations
Stackdriver Packer Prometheus Chef Jenkins Docker Puppet Labs Amazon EC2 GitHub Google Kubernetes Engine	Kubernetes macOS Linux Mint Ubuntu Debian Fedora

What are some alternatives to Spinnaker, Jenkins X?

Jenkins

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.

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.

Buddy

Git platform for web and software developers with Docker-based tools for Continuous Integration and Deployment.

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.

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.

GoCD

GoCD is an open source continuous delivery server created by ThoughtWorks. GoCD offers business a first-class build and deployment engine for complete control and visibility.

Shippable

Shippable is a SaaS platform that lets you easily add Continuous Integration/Deployment to your Github and BitBucket repositories. It is lightweight, super simple to setup, and runs your builds and tests faster than any other service.

Related Comparisons

Jenkins X vs Spinnaker: What are the differences?

Introduction

When comparing Jenkins X and Spinnaker, several key differences stand out between these two popular tools for continuous integration and delivery (CI/CD).

Architecture: Jenkins X is built on top of Jenkins and Kubernetes, providing an opinionated CI/CD solution specifically designed for cloud-native applications. On the other hand, Spinnaker is a standalone platform that supports a wider range of deployment targets, including Kubernetes, VMs, and serverless environments. This difference in architecture impacts the flexibility and scalability of each tool in different deployment scenarios.
Pipeline Orchestration: Jenkins X focuses on GitOps and automates the entire software delivery process, from source code to production, through its integrated pipeline orchestration. In contrast, Spinnaker offers a more customizable pipeline model, allowing users to define and manage complex deployment workflows across multiple environments with support for canary deployments and automated rollbacks. The level of control and granularity in pipeline orchestration differs significantly between the two tools.
Community and Ecosystem: Jenkins X has a strong community presence and extensive plugin ecosystem due to its ties with the Jenkins community, making it easier for users to extend and customize their CI/CD processes with additional features. On the other hand, Spinnaker boasts a vibrant community of cloud-native and DevOps practitioners, with contributions from major tech giants like Google and Netflix, resulting in a rich ecosystem of integrations and extensions for advanced deployment strategies.
Native Kubernetes Support: Jenkins X is tailored for Kubernetes-native applications, providing out-of-the-box support for building, testing, and deploying containerized workloads on Kubernetes clusters. In comparison, Spinnaker offers robust Kubernetes integration but also supports other deployment targets, giving users the flexibility to manage hybrid or multi-cloud environments with ease. The level of Kubernetes-centric features and support varies between Jenkins X and Spinnaker.
Deployment Strategies: Jenkins X focuses on promoting best practices in cloud-native CI/CD, such as continuous integration, automated testing, and versioned releases, emphasizing speed and stability in the deployment process. In contrast, Spinnaker emphasizes flexible deployment strategies, enabling users to implement canary deployments, blue/green deployments, and automated rollbacks seamlessly across different environments, promoting a more sophisticated approach to continuous delivery.
User Experience and Learning Curve: Jenkins X simplifies the setup and configuration process for CI/CD pipelines by offering a more guided and opinionated user experience that streamlines tasks like creating repositories, configuring environments, and automating deployments. Conversely, Spinnaker has a steeper learning curve due to its extensive feature set and complexity, requiring users to invest more time in mastering the tool's capabilities for advanced deployment scenarios. The ease of use and learning curve differ significantly between Jenkins X and Spinnaker.

Jenkins X vs Spinnaker

Overview

Jenkins X vs Spinnaker: What are the differences?