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PeerSpot user
Solution Management at a computer software company with 51-200 employees
Vendor
PRO: flexibility when setting up our builds. CON: lacks support for branched builds using multiple source repositories

What is most valuable?

We are very fond of the flexibility it offers in terms of setting up our builds. We have a wide variety of components we need to build which often require custom actions or manipulations using in house technology. Bamboo allows us to set this up quite easily by the flexible configuration features it includes.

Secondly we really like the integration of the build aspect and deploy aspect. One of the recent major releases included this feature to link build and deploy projects together allowing a deployment pipe-line to be setup completely in Bamboo. This makes the status of deployments very visible and also allows for easy follow up and even rollback in case a deployment causes too much havoc.

How has it helped my organization?

Thanks to Bamboo we are able to build changes made by development quite quickly and allow them to deploy to our internal environments when needed (as well as automated during the night). This significantly reduces the effort required to get something into test.

The fact that all builds use a unified setup and infrastructure makes it much easier to control and adapt the ever increasing number of builds.

What needs improvement?

We are lacking proper support for branched builds using multiple source repositories. The current approach is quite clunky (or non-existent) but it seems there is something in the pipe line for the end of the year according to a recent post on the Bamboo Jira.

For how long have I used the solution?

We have been using Bamboo for about 6 years now

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Bamboo
November 2024
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What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

Not at all, over all those years we only had a handful of issues and that's probably because we always take each new update directly.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No, we never encountered any serious regression. For the few cases we encountered bugs they were fixed in a reasonable time interval.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Scaling out a build system is not always easy, but thanks to the remote agent technology we are able to scale out and add nodes in a transparent way.

How are customer service and support?

Customer Service:

We use a 3d party for our license management, which makes it hard to judge this but we never had direct interactions with Atlassian Customer support.

Technical Support:

Pretty good once you get trough the initial levels of the support team, it can take a while before you are able to prove that there's a genuine issue.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We came from Jenkins back in the day, I recall our most important reasons to switch where the enterprise readiness of Bamboo and its integration in the Atlassian stack (Jira and others).

How was the initial setup?

Bamboo is very easy to deploy, all it takes is extracting the distribution and a JRE to run it. This also goes for the remote agents which install by running a JAR which already contains the configuration for communicating with its master.

What about the implementation team?

We implemented in house.

What was our ROI?

That would be 100%, the time saved in development is enormous.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We started out using only a number of agents and moved to a bigger setup using many remote agents over the years. The cost depends on the agents used and amount of boxes deployed to run them on.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

Only Jenkins, see previous answer.

What other advice do I have?

Plan before you start, Bamboo is 'only' that which automates. One should have a decent design of how the build needs to work internally and have that (scripts, servers, descriptors ...) in order before attempting to automate on a large scale.

Secondly, don't be afraid to change things to you application or pipeline to help the automation to be more efficient - for example we replaced massive chunks of hard SQL from the build scripts by a webservice to avoid dependencies to JDBC in our builds.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Software Configuration Manager at a marketing services firm
Real User
The new Salesforce plugin looked interesting despite the fact you had limited control on how the SF package is deployed.

What is most valuable?

The deployment mechanism was neat, and I liked how it allowed you deploy the same release to multiple environments. I also thought the ability to branch build and deployment jobs without needing to use templates or updating job configuration could be useful. Plus the new Salesforce plugin looked interesting despite the fact you had limited control on how the SF package is deployed.

What needs improvement?

  • Logging, no integration with Octopus
  • Build time variables did not have ability to select from a list of value
  • No ability to customize Build version
  • TFS plugin had no local workspace editing of checked out files, as all files coming from TFS have read-only attribute turned on by design
  • No history view column adjustment
  • Password variable values were not concealed within GruntJS logs
  • Watching build log GUI loses focus at build completion making debugging difficult
  • Mediocre .Net Code Coverage support and reporting.

For how long have I used the solution?

These observations were part of a multi-department, one month evaluation where we decided to go with a different product in the end.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We were using TFS for build automation. TFS proved to administrative to maintain and customize build templates. Plus we were planning to move to Git and found Git's interface within TFS/Visual Studio lacking in comparison to other Git clients.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, although, Bamboo initially creates its main install folder in the home directory of the current user. Even though Bamboo has a 'bamboo.home', Bamboo organizes its different library/build-time/resource component folders separately in the configuration and modifying those proved intensive in comparison to TeamCity and Jenkins where there's is only one 'Home' folder.

What about the implementation team?

In-house.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

We evaluated TeamCity and Octopus.

What other advice do I have?

While the community may grow over time, please ensure your current/future processes are not hindered by Bamboo's faults. Bamboo is likely to improve with time, it may be advisable to use a different solution until the product grows a bit more mature.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
Buyer's Guide
Bamboo
November 2024
Learn what your peers think about Bamboo. Get advice and tips from experienced pros sharing their opinions. Updated: November 2024.
816,660 professionals have used our research since 2012.
reviewer1256943 - PeerSpot reviewer
DevOps Engineer at a tech vendor with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
Has good integration, is efficient, and doesn't take up other resources
Pros and Cons
  • "It's one of the best solutions in this line of work. We have many Atlassian products. We use Bamboo, JIRA, Service Desk, and some other Atlassian plugins. We like that it's easy to integrate into each other. It's a suite of services."
  • "It's a little outdated. It's three years old."

What is our primary use case?

This is a part of the CI/CD. We use this tool to move into production. 

How has it helped my organization?

It does automation which saves time so that people don't have to waste time. We save around 20% on time. 

What is most valuable?

It's one of the best solutions in this line of work. We have many Atlassian products. We use Bamboo, JIRA, Service Desk, and some other Atlassian plugins. We like that it's easy to integrate into each other. It's a suite of services. 

It doesn't take up other resources. It's very efficient. 

What needs improvement?

It's a little outdated. It's three years old. 

For how long have I used the solution?

I have only used Bamboo at my current company and I've been there for a year now. 

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

It is very stable. We have experienced issues but there is alway support.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

We are upgrading to the latest version because of the scalability. 

How are customer service and technical support?

I usually solve any problems we have by myself. If for whatever reason there isn't any information available online we contact their support and they get back to us within hours. I opened around five to ten tickets with them. 

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

They have very stable pricing. The license is 120,000 per year for the license and maintenance.

What other advice do I have?

I would rate it an eight out of ten. Not a ten because the GUI is old I always have to find the right plugin.

My advice to someone considering this solution is that if you have the money, buy it. 

Which deployment model are you using for this solution?

On-premises
Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Software Development Consultant at a financial services firm with 1,001-5,000 employees
Vendor
There are some stability issues with Java 6, but it offers build agents for Windows and Linux.

What is most valuable?

  • Multiple build agents for both Windows and Linux
  • Automatic branch building - same build plan for trunk and branches
  • Connections with other Atlassian tools - JIRA and FishEye/Crucible

How has it helped my organization?

We have many developer teams building in Java, especially our Continuous Integration team. Bamboo has proven its value for the teams.

What needs improvement?

There are no areas that need improvement.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've used it for seven years,

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues encountered.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Once, with Java 6, there were some issues, but thanks to information from Atlassian support we changed to Java 7 and it works fine.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

No issues encountered.

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

I'm satisfied, 8/10.

Technical Support:

I'm satisfied, 8/10.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

We used CruiseControl, and we switched because of better functionality in Bamboo.

How was the initial setup?

It was straightforward, as the default agent and remote agents install out-of-the-box. Only some memory tuning was needed.

What about the implementation team?

We did it in-house.

What was our ROI?

It's hard to say, the yearly license/support/maintenance costs are low in relation to the added functionality.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

I see no problem in paying for support, especially because licensing is remote agent based.

Which other solutions did I evaluate?

  • CruiseControl
  • Hudson

What other advice do I have?

It's dependent on how many build teams you have. For small development sites, Hudson or Jenkins will suffice, I think. Because we’re building our main applications in-house, we always choose supported and licensed tools.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
PeerSpot user
Build and Release Engineer at a tech vendor with 201-500 employees
Real User
APIs were helpful for creating customizations but there are limited options with SSH plugins

What is most valuable?

  • Integration with Atlassian products like Jira,Crowd, and Stash
  • Easy to setup
  • Price

How has it helped my organization?

  • With Bamboo's integration with Jira, we were able to update build status and test reports to Jira bugs/tasks.
  • In Stash, we were able to improve the pull request review standards by being able to review the build and test reports.
  • Integration with Artifactory, helped us in auto updated libs and artifacts.
  • APIs were helpful for creating customizations.

What needs improvement?

  • Ease of use.
  • It needs "re-build/Trigger build" switch from Stash Pullrequest.
  • More 3rd party plugins to support IDEs.
  • Integration of older plugins with newer version of Bamboo.
  • More options for deployment plans
  • Configuring tools to agents (Had to do it manually). It would be nice have sharing from server.
  • -Docker support
  • Limited options with SSH plugins, can't use options to it

For how long have I used the solution?

Two to three years.

What was my experience with deployment of the solution?

No issues with deployment.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

Yes, Regular server/agent being down.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

Yes, It needs to allow multiple plans to run on a agent(at same time). Dedicating one whole agent isn't fair, I know we have to buy more agents, but in-terms buying and maintaining more infrastructure isn't scalable either. .

How are customer service and technical support?

Customer Service:

Never used it. Had a decent responses from open forum.

Technical Support:

Never used it.

Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?

Yes. since we wanted to keep Atlassian suite all-around.

How was the initial setup?

Easy. Just like other Atlassian products.

What was our ROI?

We got the product for a cheap price, so its alright.

What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?

We initially got 5 agents for around $2000 excluding infrastructure setup. Now we are using docker containers to maximize the mileage on them.

What other advice do I have?

If you are looking for good integration with Atlassian products and then this is the tool.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user
it_user326337 - PeerSpot reviewer
it_user326337Customer Success Manager at PeerSpot
Consultant

Siva, how has your experience with Bamboo progressed since Jan 2015 when you wrote this review?

it_user1030425 - PeerSpot reviewer
Manager at a tech services company with 501-1,000 employees
Real User
Good system customization, with good overall features and functionality
Pros and Cons
  • "One of the big things that made us choose Bamboo, is it seamlessly integrates its APIs into NetSuite, which is our main ELP system."
  • "The solution needs to support more customization in the training. What's offered is pretty generic. They need better training and should offer more guidance."

What is most valuable?

I find the solution quite easy to use. 

One of the big things that made us choose Bamboo, is it seamlessly integrates its APIs into NetSuite, which is our main ELP system.

The fact that it's integrated within Oracle products, and that it can be managing statutory people in our organization, and the features and functionality are all huge selling points. 

We felt Bamboo was a simple overall tool, and that it was also cheaper than Oracle's products at the time, which is why we chose it.

What needs improvement?

The solution needs to support more customization in the training. What's offered is pretty generic. They need better training and should offer more guidance.

For how long have I used the solution?

I've been using the solution for about a year.

What do I think about the stability of the solution?

The solution is pretty stable.

What do I think about the scalability of the solution?

The solution is scalable. We have about 400+ users on it currently. We use it on a daily basis, but I don't know if we plan to increase usage at this time.

How are customer service and technical support?

We have our own in-house team that helps troubleshoot any issues we might have. If they can't resolve it, they may go to the Bamboo help desk.

How was the initial setup?

I wasn't really involved in the implementation process so I can't really comment on it. 

We have two administrators on the solution currently.

What other advice do I have?

We use the cloud deployment model.

I'd recommend that solution. Everything structure and systems-wise is quite customizable.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.

Disclosure: I am a real user, and this review is based on my own experience and opinions.
PeerSpot user