Jenkins vs. Octopus Deploy vs. Perforce Puppet

Jenkins is a highly customizable CI/CD tool with excellent community support. One can use Jenkins to build and deploy monolith services to microservices with ease. It can handle multiple "builds" per agent simultaneously, but the process can be resource hungry, and you need some impressive specs server for that. With Jenkins, you can automate almost any task. Also, as it is an open source, we can save a load of money by not spending on enterprise CI/CD tools.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy is well suited for our requirements of deploying across multiple environments with one consistent release. We are saving a lot of time by not having to package and move release files around. Our release process is more efficient and consistent with automation. There are some parts that we could probably perform with existing tools such as DevOps and there are one or two features we have to workaround to fit for our setup such as the step templates to install websites. These are minor in our opinion.

Incentivized

Puppet is good enough to get the job done, you can use it to automate deployments and maintain files and configurations, if this is all you're looking for it's great. If you're looking for more control over your systems as a whole without having to write your own scripts or install multiple configuration management systems then Puppet is not what you're looking for.

Incentivized

• Automated Builds: Jenkins is configured to monitor the version control system for new pull requests. Once a pull request is created, Jenkins automatically triggers a build process. It checks out the code, compiles it, and performs any necessary build steps specified in the configuration.
• Unit Testing: Jenkins runs the suite of unit tests defined for the project. These tests verify the functionality of individual components and catch any regressions or errors. If any unit tests fail, Jenkins marks the build as unsuccessful, and the developer is notified to fix the issues.
• Code Analysis: Jenkins integrates with code analysis tools like SonarQube or Checkstyle. It analyzes the code for quality, adherence to coding standards, and potential bugs or vulnerabilities. The results are reported back to the developer and the product review team for further inspection.

Incentivized

• Octopus integrates nicely with TeamCity, our build server.
• Octopus uses the same deployment packages across environments and makes it easy to track their progress across those environments.
• Octopus makes it easy to handle configuration across environments which is usually a particularly difficult task.

Incentivized

• Provides a clear map of how a system is configured
• Eases the creation of a system in a specific cluster as it is scripted in code
• Simplifies configuration changes to a cluster or to every system such as rolling out vhost configurations, updating ldap roles, NFS mounts, etc
• The syntax is very easy to read and carries a lot of fluidity once the language is learned.

Incentivized

• The UI could be slightly better, it feels kind of like the 90s, but it works well.
• An easier way to filter jobs other than views on the dashboard.
• An easier way to read the console logs when tests do fail.

Incentivized

• In the past has been somewhat .net focused but that has been changing in recent times
• Would be great if community licenses for NFP organizations were perpetual - but in saying that I appreciate that Octopus does provide my organization with a community [license]. Not all organisations do
• I can’t think of any other

Incentivized

• The setup of Puppet is a nightmare compared to ansible. Anyone watching a youtube video can easily set up ansible with minimal IT knowledge. All one needs is the source IP addresses and we are good to go. Setting up Puppet is a more hands-on task and pushing the puppet agents to all the boxes is another issue. If the installation and setup were simplified like ansible that would attract a lot of people to this platform
• The syntax of the code for Puppet is not as easy as ansible. Ansible simply follows a YAML format and it's like typing in normal English. Even complicated tasks can be written by just understanding YAML syntax. Perhaps Puppet needs to revisit the lanugage used and try to come up with a much simpler lanugage for writing code. This will make day-to-day usage easier.

Incentivized

We have a certain buy-in as we have made a lot of integrations and useful tools around jenkins, so it would cost us quite some time to change to another tool. Besides that, it is very versatile, and once you have things set up, it feels unnecessary to change tool. It is also a plus that it is open source.

Incentivized

Would be a 10 except for the retirement of the free Community Edition.

Incentivized

Jenkins streamlines development and provides end to end automated integration and deployment. It even supports Docker and Kubernetes using which container instances can be managed effectively. It is easy to add documentation and apply role based access to files and services using Jenkins giving full control to the users. Any deviation can be easily tracked using the audit logs.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy has greatly helped us to improve our reliability and frequency of our deployments and given us the confidence to deploy much more often, with a direct benefit to customers. Cross-platform support and release to Cloud require more focus on the product side.

Incentivized

No, when we integrated this with GitHub, it becomes more easy and smart to manage and control our workforce. Our distributed workforce is now streamlined to a single bucket. All of our codes and production outputs are now automatically synced with all the workers. There are many cases when our in-house team makes changes in the release, our remote workers make another release with other environment variables. So it is better to get all of the work in control.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy is a software that runs very effectively, is easy to use, does not require such a high learning curve, provides the necessary tools to carry out the functions it offers, making it a very flexible software, it also allows that can be configured according to the needs of the user and provides integrations with other very advantageous tools since they are carried out in a very favorable way.

Incentivized

As with all open source solutions, the support can be minimal and the information that you can find online can at times be misleading. Support may be one of the only real downsides to the overall software package. The user community can be helpful and is needed as the product is not the most user-friendly thing we have used.

Incentivized

Octopus Deploy support has always been there for us, even when using the free tier, we get responsive hands-on help. We haven't needed to use that level of support since the documentation is clearly written, and help is readily available within the interface itself. Using Octopus Deploy is a truly joyful experience.

Incentivized

Puppet has top class support. You can simply mail them with their query and they will respond to your query in a timely manner. We do have enterprise license for puppet. Also there is a vibrant community for puppet out there. So even if you dont purchase a premium support option you can simply google your queries and get answers

Incentivized

It is worth well the time to setup Jenkins in a docker container. It is also well worth to take the time to move any "Jenkins configuration" into Jenkinsfiles and not take shortcuts.

Incentivized

Overall, Jenkins is the easiest platform for someone who has no experience to come in and use effectively. We can get a junior engineer into Jenkins, give them access, and point them in the right direction with minimal hand-holding. The competing products I have used (TravisCI/GitLab/Azure) provide other options but can obfuscate the process due to the lack of straightforward simplicity. In other areas (capability, power, customization), Jenkins keeps up with the competition and, in some areas, like customization, exceeds others.

Incentivized

There aren't really any competitors in the land of ASP.NET. Deployment is too ad-hoc. Other tools exist that have massive downsides, like Web Deploy. Most aren't even supported anymore. You could argue that containers (Docker) are a competitor, but containers cannot be used for everything and solve a somewhat different problem. Octopus Deploy is even able to help with containers. To us, Octopus Deploy was really the only really polished solution.

Incentivized

HPSA is a licensed product and incurs significant upfront investment costs due to COTS licensing. Puppet Data Center Automation has a significantly lower upfront investment and product documentation is more readily available. Chef is a very similar offering, however, at the time our decision was considered, the adoption of Chef vs. Puppet was significantly less in the community.

Incentivized

Great support from professional services.

Incentivized

• Faster Time-to-Market: Jenkins automate the build, testing, and deployment process, enabling faster feedback and continuous improvement.
• Improved Quality: Jenkins automatically run unit tests and integration tests, ensuring that code changes meet the necessary quality standards.
• Cost Savings: Jenkins is an open-source tool that is free to use

Incentivized

• Allows us to deploy to our fleet quickly and without interruption to service
• Can roll back to previous releases quickly, allowing us to back out of breaking changes in the worst-case scenarios.
• Integration with several targets has allowed us to explore new platforms for our products, such as Docker in AWS ECS.

Incentivized

• Cut deployment times down to around 1 hour from 4-5 hours.
• Allows us to get a fully running system up from scratch in around 30 minutes.
• Allows for a more clear view of what is required to get a host running.

Incentivized