CloudBees Reviews

We are using it for continuous integration and continuous deployment purposes.

It can manage multiple Jenkins instances. In standard Jenkins setups, you're typically limited to a single master configuration. However, with CloudBees, you can partition the system into multiple Jenkins servers, allowing each team to have a dedicated instance. This is useful when dealing with high workloads. Instead of relying on a single worker node, you can distribute the load across multiple worker nodes, improving efficiency and performance.

If you're logged in and working for about thirty minutes and then go idle for five to ten minutes, Jenkins will prompt you to re-authenticate. You need to enter your user details and password again. This reauthentication requirement is a drawback. We contacted CloudBees support to extend the idle time, but it didn't work out as expected.

On the other hand, we receive efficient support from the technical team. Whenever we face an issue, whether it's related to user accounts or backend problems, we get a prompt response, and they're actively working to resolve these issues.

I have been using CloudBees for four years.

We haven't faced any issues like breakdowns, except for one instance during a version upgrade. We made some mistakes while upgrading the version, which caused a brief issue lasting about two minutes. Other than that, we haven't encountered any significant problems. When we were upgrading the version, we made some mistakes, which led to issues. However, the technical mobile team helped us revert to the previous version. Later, with their help, we successfully upgraded to the latest version.

There were no issues with support. Based on the license purchase, you'll receive a prompt response. It might get some delays, but not usually.

If you choose to use the regular Jenkins, you won't receive official support if you encounter bugs or issues. This can be challenging, especially when working on large projects for big organizations, where accuracy and reliability are crucial. Using open-source tools without support can lead to difficulties in maintaining uptime. To address this, we opted for a licensed version, like CloudBees, which provides strong support from their tech team. CloudBees has a robust master-slave architecture, which enhances project efficiency.

The initial setup is easy. We have been using the Helm package manager for installation purposes.

If you're using CloudBees for the first time, you might find the Helm process confusing. You need to understand how Helm operates in real time. It's essential to maintain a separate override file and a values.yaml file. If you need to change any values, you'll modify them in these files accordingly. While the setup might seem confusing initially, it becomes much easier to use once you get familiar with the tool.

If interested, you can try out CloudBees with a free trial, typically lasting about 15 days. This will give you hands-on experience with the platform, and you might find its features quite appealing. Unlike standard Jenkins, CloudBees offers additional packages and features unavailable in the regular Jenkins distribution. I recommend giving it a try, as exploring new technologies can be beneficial. The availability of free trials makes it a great opportunity to see what CloudBees offers.

CloudBees is quite easy to use as a beginner. It operates similarly to Jenkins, with some additional features and options available. You might notice extra functionalities and configurations, but it's quite similar to Jenkins overall. I recommend trying out the trial version to get a feel for it.

I rate CloudBees as nine out of ten. The client tech team has been very responsive, and their support has been excellent. We have split our development across multiple teams—eight in total. Instead of overloading a single Jenkins server, we've distributed the load. We are running CloudBees on a Kubernetes cluster, with eight nodes handling the workload. The master manages these nodes efficiently.

CloudBees is a user-friendly tool.

I think the pipeline design we had on CloudBees was not very intuitive. There were a couple of reasons for this. The first reason was the way we went about merging our code. When we have code, we would just put it on GitLab. Realistically, GitLab already provides CI/CD pipelines. We shouldn't be using CloudBees because it's a third-party source we don't need.

We started realizing that CloudBees was not the right tool for that. The problem with CloudBees is that when you merge it, the pipelines would randomly fail multiple times. The failures wouldn't be related to a test that we would have.

It became such a huge problem that pipeline issues became a whole other domain that we would end up exploring through different developers. Because of that, we're actually moving away from CloudBees now and looking into just making GitLab pipelines.

I rate the solution’s stability a five out of ten.

We scaled the solution, and it's a major part of the company. Since tons and tons of products are using CloudBees, I don't think it has a problem with scalability.

I've worked a bit with the deployment of the pipeline. I don't want to say I made my own pipeline, but I merged two repositories and made my own pipeline out of them. It took me almost a week's worth of work and a lot of random failures here and there.

The setup will not be too complicated if you have good knowledge of it. It wasn't that easy for me because I was still like an intern who had just started.

I wouldn't say anybody can use the solution. CloudBees is a user-friendly tool, but it's a bit confusing to navigate in certain places. It wasn't confusing, but it was a bit unintuitive. On the other hand, the GitLab pipelines we started migrating towards were significantly more user-friendly.

The solution's integration with other tools is fine, and I rate it a six out of ten. We integrated with GitLab, and it was fine. We did have a lot of problems, though, and we would have people working until past midnight trying to fix those. It was kind of a problem on that end. It was getting the job done eventually, but it had many ghost problems.

People would end up waiting for weeks to merge perfectly good code just to make it work for this pipeline that was having problems. It was very annoying from that standpoint.

I don't think there's any actual problem with CloudBees. Our problems with CloudBees could have been specific to our code, development practices, and how we used the tool. At the end of the day, it's not about the tool itself, but it's about how you use the tool. There may be a problem with the way we were using the tool. I think CloudBees is still good.

At the end of the day, it did get the job done for a lot of things. I have to give it credit where it's due. I would recommend CloudBees to other users. In my opinion, having a third-party pipeline when your repository already provides a pipeline doesn't make any sense to me. If GitLab is providing a pipeline, use that pipeline, which is more intuitive. It's also fine if you want to use CloudBees as a secondary pipeline support.

Overall, I rate the solution six and a half out of ten.

CloudBees is the Jenkins tool for building and deploying. There's open-source Jenkins, which is free and can be used by any organization, but it offers a different architecture for Jenkins. If your organization is larger, you might choose the architecture. This way, you can have different masters for different applications, and different teams can manage their masters separately. However, a single person can still control all the masters, whoever manages it for the organization.

It has dynamic node allocation for the code we're building. When we trigger a build, like for Java code, it pulls a Docker image from a repository. Then, a pod spins up. If you have ten nodes, the solution uses a Kubernetes architecture. There's one master node and ten different nodes connected to the master. Whenever we trigger a build, a pod spins up and gets scheduled on any of the slave nodes in the Kubernetes cluster. That's the best thing I see about the product. 

The management is good. You don't need to manage different nodes individually. You don't have to specify which node to build the code on. In CloudBees, you can avoid that. You mention the node, and it will automatically schedule the pod on whichever node is free.

You can also configure different nodes. Another good point is that you can configure Elastic File System to store the data.

The setup is somewhat complicated. You need a cloud architect and engineer to set it up properly. The initial setup will take time, so you need a good engineer and architect to handle it.

I have been working with the product for three years. 

I have no issues with the tool's stability. 

I find the product scalable. Currently, we're using a Kubernetes architecture and working on-premises. However, other teams are working on the cloud version of CloudBees with AWS infrastructure. There, we can also scale the nodes.

I'm currently working for an organization that has over 200 applications. They've adopted the CloudBees architecture. So, these 200 applications have 200 different masters. All of this is managed by a single team, which is a separate team. The different applications and different members are managed by a single person who oversees the entire organization, similar to how we have it in AWS.

The tool's support is good. 

Neutral

I don't think CloudBees requires much maintenance, but some things must be considered. As I said, they have a Kubernetes architecture, so Kubernetes patching and Jenkins patching will also be required. It publishes upgraded versions on its website. You can purchase the latest license and upgrade the Jenkins version through that purchase.

I rate the overall solution an eight out of ten. 

We use the product primarily for automation tasks. It handles various processes that don't require human intervention, making it a crucial part of our workflow.

One recent product feature that stands out is the pipeline explorer, which is providing significant value for us right now.

The platform could integrate better with other tools and support external tools directly.

I've been using CloudBees for about five years.

Over time, we have encountered product performance issues at large scales. However, at small to medium scales, there are no issues at all.

Overall, I rate the stability an eight. 

As long as you follow the vendor's recommendations on scaling, the platform performs well. Adapting to more complex organizational challenges outside those recommendations could be better. However, the support team does their best to handle the issues. 

I rate the scalability a nine. 

The VM-based infrastructure setup is easy. However, Kubernetes-based setup is difficult, even for experts who find bugs and report them back to the vendor.

To effectively use the platform, you need to know Jenkins, as the product is essentially a layer on top of Jenkins.

It's a powerful and flexible system, but it's important to implement proper guardrails from the outset because making systemic changes down the road can be difficult for your organization.

I rate it a nine out of ten. 

We use CloudBees Jenkins with Jenkins and Sonar validation for our pipeline. We use it for all microservices, web system payment integrations, and overall pipeline configurations and deployment processes.

CloudBees has improved our DevOps practices by allowing us to deploy features and fixes efficiently. It supports our business rules, security analysis, and overall deployment process while simplifying the configuration.

The most valuable features are Java features, microservice communication, payment validation, Jenkins Sonar, management master to CloudBees, Blue Ocean, JobConfig, and support.

The user interface of CloudBees is good but could be even more intuitive. Improving the user-friendliness of the interface and having simpler setup configurations would greatly benefit new users.

I have been working with CloudBees for around two to three years.

CloudBees is very stable and reliable. From one to ten, I would rate the stability a ten.

CloudBees offers high scalability. On a scale from one to ten, I would rate its scalability a ten.

Customer service and technical support are excellent. I rate the technical support from one to ten as a ten. They provide fast, simple, and efficient support.

Positive

Before using CloudBees, we used Jenkins SonarQube, Nexus, Azure, and AWS. The decision to switch to CloudBees was made for better integration and deployment capabilities.

The initial setup of CloudBees is very easy and straightforward. It takes around 20-30 minutes to deploy completely without any complicated steps.

Our configuration team handled the setup and deployment. Twenty people were involved in the deployment and maintenance processes, and they ensured everything worked perfectly without delays.

CloudBees provides a robust and efficient solution for our DevOps needs. Ensuring an intuitive user interface and simplifying the setup process can further enhance its usability for new users.