GoCD vs. Red Hat Satellite

Previously, our team used Jenkins. However, since it's a shared deployment resource we don't have admin access. We tried GoCD as it's open source and we really like. We set up our deployment pipeline to run whenever codes are merged to master, run the unit test and revert back if it doesn't pass. Once it's deployed to the staging environment, we can simply do 1-click to deploy the appropriate version to production. We use this to deploy to an on-prem server and also AWS. Some deployment pipelines use custom Powershell script for.Net application, some others use Bash script to execute the docker push and cloud formation template to build elastic beanstalk.

Incentivized

Red Hat Satellite works amazingly with servers that need more control over their packages. For one or two servers that you're just doing "dnf update" Red Hat Satellite is way overkill.

Incentivized

• Pipeline-as-Code works really well. All our pipelines are defined in yml files, which are checked into SCM.
• The ability to link multiple pipelines together is really cool. Later pipelines can declare a dependency to pick up the build artifacts of earlier ones.
• Agents definition is really great. We can define multiple different kinds of environments to best suit our diverse build systems.

Incentivized

• Patches
• License Management
• Dashboards / Visibility

• UI can be improved
• Location for settings can be re-arranged
• API for setting up pipeline

Incentivized

• I woud love for it to provide the same functionality for non-RHEL OS's
• Containerized Installation
• Simplified workflow setup

Incentivized

When you're first getting into the platform, the GUI can be a little confusing. It takes a little while to get accustomed to where everything is, and what everything is used for. I highly recommend prior training / classes before diving into the platform. This will ensure a better transition into the platform, and more likely to use more features of it overall due to the new knowledge gained

GoCD is easier to setup, but harder to customize at runtime. There's no way to trigger a pipeline with custom parameters.

Jenkins is more flexible at runtime. You can define multiple user-provided parameters so when user needs to trigger a build, there's a form for him/her to input the parameters.

Incentivized

• ROI has been good since it's open source
• Settings.xml need to be backed up periodically. It contains all the settings for your pipelines! We accidentally deleted before and we have to restore and re-create several missing pipelines
• More straight forward use of API and allows filtering e.g., pull all pipelines triggered after this date

Incentivized

• We have been able to automate the update process to not require after-hours monitoring.
• Centralizing updates has greatly reduced the overall time servers are down and processing their individual updates.
• We are able to bring our own RPM packages in and stage them in the same deployment model as official Red Hat packages.

Incentivized