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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins vs. AWS CodePipeline
Rafael Schleetz Benvenuti & Steffen Gebert
Berlin AWS User Group Meetup – 14.01.2020

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Abstract
Who has not used Jenkins? Who does not have a love-hate relationship with it?
At EMnify, we are heavy Jenkins users, but we re also always considering
alternatives where hosted services could make our life easier.
Therefore, we recently - once again - looked at AWS CodePipeline and its friends
CodeCommit, CodeBuild, and CodeDeploy. In this talk, we will compare the current
state of the two ecosystems regarding their simplicity and flexibility for implementing
both trivial as well as complex pipelines. Further, we cover topics like: deployment,
maintenance, security, costs, and usability.
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Agenda
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Current
State
Costs Feature
Comparison
Combining
Both

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Your Guides
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Dr. Steffen Gebert
@StGebert
Director Technology, Infrastructure
Würzburg
Rafael Schleetz Benvenuti
@rafaelbenvenuti
Site Reliability Engineer
Berlin

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
EMnify
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One of the first cellular
providers on AWS -
dedicated for IoT businesses
We’re where customers are -
on AWS offering
simple integrations
(TGW, Kinesis)
Programmable SIM that
works all over the world in
~600 networks
Web portal and APIs
for managing SIMs and their
policies

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
EMnify GmbH
• Privately founded in 2014
• ~95 in total
• ~25 people touching code
• Engineering teams in Würzburg & Berlin
• Technology stack: AWS, Terraform, Java, Akka, Perl, C++, Go
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins and AWS CodePipeline
Current State

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Running Jenkins
• Jenkins Master
• EC2 instance, ECS+EFS, or EKS, Fargate (requires RWO file system)
• Recommendation: run it in Docker and include your plugins
• Build Agents
• Optional J (building on master is usually a bad idea)
• EC2 spot (using ec2 plugin) or EKS (using kubernetes plugin)
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Job Definition
Job DSL Organization Folder
Everything as Code
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Jenkins Pipeline
Build Agents
Configuration
as Code
Jenkins Master
AWS
CloudFormation

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Out of Scope: Jenkins X
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
AWS CodePipeline
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Pipeline
Implementation

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins Pipeline
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Domain-specific language
Built-in control structures
Steps
•sh, bat
•readFile, readMavenPom
•stash, archiveArtifacts
•build
pipeline {
stages {
stage("Build") {
steps {
echo "Starting engines.."
sh "make"
}
}
stage("Unit") {
steps {
sh "mvn test"
}
}
}
agent {
docker { label "maven:latest"
}
}
}

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins Pipeline Steps
• Plugins contribute additional steps
• Online reference: https://jenkins.io/doc/pipeline/steps/
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Pipeline
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Actions
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Source BitBucket Github CodeCommit S3 ECR
Build CodeBuild Cloudbees Jenkins Teamcity
Test CodeBuild
AWS Device
Farm
Jenkins
Deploy CodeDeploy CloudFormation Elastic Beanstalk Service Catalog ECS S3
Invoke AWS Lambda

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Pricing

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins
Pricing
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Setup Costs
•Initial Setup Costs
Usage Costs
•Computing resources used
•EC2 instance costs
•On-Demand
•Reserved
•Spot
•A bit of storage, traffic etc.
Maintenance Costs
•Operational Costs

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
AWS Pricing
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CodePipeline
• Each pipeline costs $1.00 per month (when active)
• Pipelines are free for the first 30 days after creation
CodeCommit
• Free for first active 5 users per month
• Each additional active user costs $1.00 per month
CodeBuild
• Small instance (2 vCPUs, 3 GB RAM) - $0.005/min
• Medium instance (4 vCPUs, 7 GB RAM) - $0.01/min
• Large instance (8 vCPUs, 15 GB RAM) - $0.02/min
CodeDeploy
• Free

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Price Comparison for Build Capacity
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Jenkins Master Instance Jenkins Agent Instance
c5.large RESERVED c5.large SPOT
2 vCPUS | 4 GB Ram 2 vCPUS | 4 GB Ram
$39.42/month $0.000325/min
CodeBuild Instance
general1.small
2 vCPUS | 3 GB Ram
$0.005 / min

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Price Comparison for Active Pipelines
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Jenkins Master Instance
c5.large RESERVED
2 vCPUS | 4 GB Ram
CodePipelines
No Instances Required
No Resources Required

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Visualization

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Basic Pipeline
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Visualization in Jenkins
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild Log Output
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Execution Summary
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Execution History
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild Metrics
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Let’s Start the
Pipeline

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Access Control

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Access Control
• Jenkins
• Users and groups, built-in or via
SSO/OAuth
• Per-project/folder permissions
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• CodePipeline
• IAM users and roles
• Configure and run permissions
AWS Identity and Access
Management

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Service Permissions
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Building

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins Build Environments
• Any agent (running Java) connecting to
the master (Linux, Windows, MacOS, ..)
• Docker images
• Kubernetes Pod with multiple containers

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild Build Environments
• A CodeBuild build environment represents a combination of:
• operating system / programming language runtime / set of tools
• Essentially, a build environment is a Docker Image by definition.
• You can use Docker Images stored in:
• The Official Codebuild Image Repository
• AWS ECR Repositories
• DockerHub

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild BuildSpec
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Secrets Handling

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins Credentials Management
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild Credentials Management
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Collecting
Test Results

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins: Collecting Test Results
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeBuild: Collecting Test Results
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Working With
Multiple Branches

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Different Behavior per Branch
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Implementing Gitflow in CodePipeline
49 Source: https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/implementing-gitflow-using-aws-codepipeline-aws-codecommit-aws-codebuild-and-aws-codedeploy/

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Getting Approvals
And Input

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Approval
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Getting Input
• Input step
• Simple approval
• Values/text can be dynamically computed
• During pipeline execution
• Jenkins Parametrized build
• Only supplied with job execution
• Can come from other job / via POST
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Pipeline
Super Powers

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins Scripted Pipelines
• More power compared to Declarative Pipelines
• Full Groovy power
• Control/data structures
• Classes
• Variable assignment
• Groovy errors only triggered during execution
• Build error handling up to user (try/catch)
• Greater flexibility in build agent allocation
• Declarative: use script{} for super powers
• Shared libraries to maintain custom steps
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodePipeline Custom Actions
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Deployment

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Deployments
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Deploying to EC2 Instances
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AWS CodeDeploy
Jenkins Master
Jenkins Agent
Security
Group
EKS

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeDeploy AppSpec Example for EC2
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
CodeDeploy Rollbacks
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Jenkins and CodePipeline
Working Together

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
From CodePipeline to Jenkins
• AWS CodePipeline Plugin (polls for build jobs, publishes results)
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
From Jenkins to AWS
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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Summary &
Conclusion

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@rafaelbenvenuti
@StGebert
Summary & Conclusion
• The best CI/CD tool depends on your situation and requirements (still in 2020)
• Accepting that one tool can‘t cover everything makes switching easier
• Integrating both together allows:
• Getting the best of both / Cheaper solution / Smoother migration
• Advice: Please give CodeDeploy a chance, it is a pretty interesting tool
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