Jenkins and Chadura Tech: Powering Continuous Integration & Delivery

Jenkins is an open-source automation server that enables developers to reliably build, test, and deploy software. It serves as the centerpiece of most DevOps toolchains and CI/CD pipelines. Originally developed as Hudson by Kohsuke Kawaguchi in 2004, Jenkins has evolved into the most widely adopted CI/CD automation tool in the world.

• 2004 : Hudson is developed at Sun Microsystems.
• 2011 : Due to trademark disputes with Oracle, the project forks into Jenkins.
• 2011 - 2025 : Jenkins becomes the de facto tool for automation in DevOps.

• Open source and highly extensible
• Huge community
• Over 1800+ plugins
• Quick adoption by enterprises

Jenkins has a simple yet powerful master-agent architecture:

• Manages tasks like scheduling builds, sending out jobs, monitoring agents, reporting results, etc.

• Executes build jobs, tests, deployments, etc.
• Agents can run on different OSs, containers, or virtual machines.

• Web-based user interface to configure jobs and view pipelines.

• The core that runs jobs concurrently (depending on system resources).

Security is critical since Jenkins can access source code, secrets, servers, and more.

• Enable Matrix-Based Security
• Integrate with LDAP / SSO
• Use credentials plugin for storing secrets securely
• Install role-based authorization plugin
• Keep Jenkins and plugins up to date

As teams grow, Jenkins needs to scale.

• Use Jenkins agents for parallelism
• Run agents on Kubernetes
• Separate jobs by workload using labels
• Use Pipeline as Code to reduce UI load
• Use folders and views to organize jobs
• Archive logs and artifacts externally

• Developers write code on their local machines.
• Once a feature or fix is ready, they commit the code.

• The source code is pushed to a version control system, such as Git (as shown in the image).
• Jenkins is configured to monitor the Git repository for new commits.

• It triggers an automated pipeline.
• Jenkins acts as the central orchestrator of the CI/CD process.

This is visualized as a pipeline above Jenkins, showing multiple stages:

• Commit - Code is committed to the repository.
• Build - Jenkins compiles the code and creates artifacts (e.g., JAR, WAR files).
• Test - Automated testing (unit tests, integration tests) is performed.
• Stage - The code is deployed to a staging environment.
• Deploy (Dev/QA) - Further deployments can be triggered to development or QA environments for validation.

Production - Final stage where the application is deployed to the live/production environment.

Continuous Integration / Delivery (CI / CD)

• The horizontal arrow labeled "Continuous Integration/Delivery" emphasizes automation and speed.
• The goal is to integrate code continuously, test it automatically, and deliver updates frequently to production.

Developer commits code →  Git detects and stores it → Jenkins triggers a pipeline → Code is built, tested, staged, and deployed → Final release is deployed to production servers

• Large-scale monorepos and microservices pipelines
• Complex approval workflows with stages

• Use Jenkins for building, testing, deploying MVPs
• Docker-based CI for cost-efficiency

• Teach CI/CD practices using local Jenkins labs

• Integrate Jenkins with security tools like Snyk, Aqua, Checkmarx

Jenkins is more than just a CI tool - it's the engine that powers modern DevOps practices. While newer tools may offer flashier UIs or native cloud support, Jenkins remains unmatched in flexibility, community support, and extensibility. 

Whether you’re building a mobile app, deploying microservices, or running ML workflows, Jenkins can be the glue that holds your DevOps pipeline together.