A well-curated Jenkins certification training can teach a variety of subjects, including server automation, continuous integration, build and configuration tools, Jenkins’s master-slave architecture, various types of plugins, and the implementation of automated testing, through a series of hands-on projects and exercises.
Jenkins, a continuous integration server, is used to perform the integration work (continuous integration server is the practice of running tests on a non-developer machine automatically every time when new code is pushed into the source repository). Java was the coding language that was utilized during its creation. It offers a diverse variety of plugins that, when combined, can assist in automating the building, deploying, and management processes of any given project. It is possible to install it by utilizing native system packages or Docker, and it is possible for it to run independently on any computer with the assistance of JRE (Java Runtime Environment). It is able to automate a wide variety of tasks, such as the procedures for developing, testing, and delivering software.
Utilizing a server that supports continuous integration affords a significant number of benefits to the organization. It is to everyone’s advantage to provide information once all of the tests are correctly functioning and also providing timely feedback. You will receive helpful feedback as soon as possible after breaking the build or making any modifications. To ensure that you are aware of the error codes and that they are promptly fixed, click here to check. The deployment process can be sped up with Jenkins, which makes continuous deployment and delivery much easier. Continuous integration serves as the cornerstone upon which continuous deployment and delivery are built. A list of components and commands that can be utilized to assist in Jenkins mastery is provided in this section. These are these commands that can be entered into the command-line tool in order to gain access to a wide variety of different functions.
Construction Using the Jenkins Architecture
It was discovered that a single Jenkins server would not be able to meet all of the requirements in their entirety. To begin, it’s possible that we’ll need to test our builds in a variety of environments. These environments could range from desktop to cloud to mobile. A single Jenkins server working by itself will not be able to complete this task successfully. Second, if larger and heavier projects are continually produced, a single Jenkins server will be unable to handle the required volume of work that needs to be processed because the server will be overwhelmed.
The distributed architecture of Jenkins was developed with the goal of meeting the aforementioned requirements, which can be found in the previous sentence. In addition, a Master-Slave architecture is utilized by Jenkins in order to manage the various distributed build processes. Within the confines of this design, communication between the Master and the Slave is carried out via the TCP/IP protocol. This protocol is used within the framework of this design.
- Jenkins Master
The Jenkins master is the one who is in charge of scheduling the jobs, assigning the slaves, and sending the builds to the slaves so that they can carry out the jobs. In addition to this, it will monitor the status of the slaves and determine whether they are offline or online. It will also retrieve the build result responses from the slaves and display them on the console output.
- Jenkins Slave
It is executed on the server that is located remotely. The Jenkins server is responsive to the directives issued by the Jenkins master and is compatible with all operating systems. The master assigns the slave various building jobs, and the slave sees those jobs through to completion. Additionally, the project has the capability of being customized so that a particular slave machine is selected.
- Jenkins CLI
Jenkins provides its users and administrators with a command-line interface that can be used to access Jenkins from within a shell environment or other scripting environment. This command-line interface can be accessed through SSH, the Jenkins Command Line Interface client, or a JAR file that is included with Jenkins.
For this, we will need to begin by retrieving the file jenkins-cli.jar from a Jenkins controller at the URL /jnlpJars/jenkins-cli.jar, or more specifically JENKINS URL/jnlpJars/jenkins-cli.jar, and then we will need to run it in the following manner:
AD java -jar jenkins-cli.jar -s http://localhost:8080/ -webSocket help
On the Manage Jenkins page, you can access this choice by clicking the “Jenkins CLI” option in the Tools and Actions section:
- Improving Jenkins’s Functionality and Performance
The majority of Jenkins users have voiced their dissatisfaction with the software’s sluggishness or lack of responsiveness, and numerous problems have been identified. It is inconvenient to use slow CI systems because this both slows down the development process and wastes time. We are able to boost the efficiency of those systems by implementing a few straightforward recommendations.
In the following sections, we are going to talk about a few suggestions for improving Jenkins and bringing a smile to the faces of our engineers.
- Reduce the Number of Constructions on the Master Node as Much as Possible
The master node is where the application is actually executing; it’s Jenkins’ brain, and it cannot be replaced. A slave, on the other hand, can be. Since we want to keep our Jenkins master as “work-free” as possible, we will use its CPU and RAM to schedule and trigger builds on slaves. This can be accomplished by limiting our jobs to a node label, such as SlaveNode, and running them only on those nodes.
When assigning jobs to the pipeline, use the label as an identifier, for instance:
AD stage(“stage 1”) node(“SlaveNode”) sh “echo “Hello $params.NAME” “
In those circumstances, the task and node block will only be executed on slaves that have the SlaveNode label attached to them.
- Don’t Hoard Too Much of Your Previous Construction Records
During the process of configuring a job, we have the ability to specify how many of that job’s builds are to be stored on the filesystem as well as for how long. This feature, which is known as Discard Old Builds, comes in handy when we trigger numerous builds of a job in a short amount of time.
