CloudBees Reviews

I worked on the DevOps team and was responsible for automating build and deployment processes. My focus was on the automation side using CloudBees. Our CloudBees Jenkins instance was used globally by around 8,000 developers. We created numerous templates because CloudBees offers additional benefits over the open-source Jenkins.

One key advantage was the enterprise support from CloudBees, which was extremely helpful. Whenever we performed upgrades or needed assistance, we had support from the CloudBees team, which was valuable for leveraging the features CloudBees provides, such as template creation.

We developed templates for various build types, including Python, PyPI, NPM, and Maven. Developers used these templates for their builds and application onboarding. Our CloudBees instance had a high-availability architecture integrated with security tools like SonarQube and Checkmarx. Additionally, our builds were containerized and managed on OpenShift, which helped streamline agent management and regular cleanups.

CloudBees's assistance was crucial, especially with features like template creation and the fully cloud-native architecture that CloudBees offers.

Integration with other tools was generally smooth, but we encountered some issues with version mismatches. For example, if the CloudBees Jenkins instance was on one version but a plugin was on an older version, upgrading the plugin often required an upgrade to the Jenkins instance. This dependency sometimes caused delays, so we had to be cautious with the plugin and Jenkins upgrades.

We did face some challenges, particularly with the infrastructure. Our CloudBees Jenkins instances were deployed on virtual machines, and we experienced downtime in production environments. This downtime was often related to infrastructure issues rather than problems with CloudBees itself. CloudBees' team consistently advised us to maintain a robust infrastructure and ensure high availability to mitigate these issues.

I have been using CloudBees for seven or eight months.

I rate the solution’s stability an eight out of ten.

Scalability largely depends on how the tool is set up within your infrastructure. It’s crucial to configure scalability, availability, and fault tolerance for banking customers who often use on-premises setups. The effectiveness of CloudBees in these aspects will depend on how well the infrastructure is managed and set up to meet these needs.

The support team was excellent. They consistently adhered to their SLAs and KPIs and were very responsive during outages. We had several meetings to address issues, and they were always helpful in resolving any problems we faced.

Positive

The initial setup depends on your application's specific requirements and nature. CloudBees provides the tool as a vendor, but how effectively you use its features depends on your team's technical skills and how well your application integrates with the automation tool.

Sometimes, we had to make adjustments to ensure compatibility with CloudBees. Initially, we had to thoroughly review documentation to understand the additional features CloudBees offers beyond open-source Jenkins.

We had to implement many customizations because CloudBees offers significant flexibility in CloudBees Jenkins. While Jenkins is consistent globally for automation, CloudBees Jenkins is essentially an enhanced version of the open-source Jenkins with added enterprise support.

Relying on open-source solutions alone isn't practical for industries like financial services and healthcare due to their need for enterprise support. CloudBees effectively addresses this need. Jenkins remains one of the most widely used CI/CD tools, and with CloudBees providing robust enterprise support, many organizations continue to rely on it.

I've advised using Jenkins because it’s well-supported and reliable. From my time at Oracle, where we used open-source Jenkins, I experienced firsthand the challenges of inadequate support in open-source forums. Delays in resolving issues could impact deadlines and customer satisfaction. For industries like banking, healthcare, and finance, having enterprise support is crucial to avoid such problems and ensure smooth operations.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

We are running over 200 applications in CloudBees. We integrate different DevOps tools like Vault, SonarQube, Nexus, Nexus IQ, and Ansible with CloudBees. We use the tool to create multiple pipelines, like multi-branch pipelines, declarative pipelines, standalone pipelines, and parameterized pipelines.

We upgrade CloudBees on a time-to-time basis. We create the Docker images and push them to Harbor using CloudBees. We also create nodes like the Ansible and Docker nodes to run the images on that particular node. For the dot net application, we configured the Windows slave machine on CloudBees.

CloudBees's user interface is very simple and user-friendly. If anyone knows a little bit about CloudBees, they can understand it better regarding where to go, how to go, how to create a pipeline, and what parameters they have to configure. Users don't have to dig too much. They just need to log in, and everything is there for them to read and operate.

I noticed that CloudBees runs too slowly because some applications run more than 50 pipelines. When we try to open it, it takes too long and shows an error message saying the service is unavailable. While raising a case with the vendor, the vendor asks us to share the support bundle logs for the pipeline. When we try to download the support bundle logs, it still shows me the service unavailable error.

When we tell the support team about our problem, we don't get the exact solution. The same issues keep repeating, and they ask us to upgrade the plug-in for many issues. However, upgrading the plug-in does not help fix the issue.

We are facing some issues for which we have tried everything, but it hasn't been fixed. The support team told us to upgrade the version to fix those issues, but I don't know whether that was correct.

Neutral

The solution's initial setup is simple for someone who knows CloudBees well.

We have an option called configuration management in the cloud. We have installed a Vault plugin and mentioned the Vault URL and the token in the configuration management. Using that, we have integrated CloudBees with Vault. For SonarQube, we installed a SonarQube plugin and then mentioned the URL, username, and password. Using that, we integrated SonarQube with CloudBees.

I would recommend the solution to other users. New users should see the plug-ins and features, regardless of their version. When you try to implement CloudBees in your environment, you should build the infrastructure based on how many applications CloudBees can support and how many pipelines you will run on those applications. This prevents CloudBee's performance from becoming slow.

Customers will get upset and give bad reviews if the solution's performance worsens. Users must keep these things in mind before implementing CloudBees in their environment.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We had a couple of projects we were working on. Much of it has to do with the combination of a recently acquired brand over at our parent company, and we were considering consolidating our cloud platform and our domain. We were also looking at moving applications from one team to another so that we could leverage them.

We also want to increase our production automation. That may have been the most leveraged part of that. There were a lot of teams, and they were doing a lot of work. It was causing levels of concern, confusion, risk, oversight, and over-expenditure.

We were looking at various applications, and CloudBees was selected so that we could consolidate and combine all of our efforts. We wanted to reduce the number of tools we were using to help deliver and standardize a lot of our processes and procedures.

The solution's most valuable feature is its flexibility. I like how CloudBees functions and how it can communicate and message progress. I like how it can be containerized, and developers can use certain aspects of it without interjecting. They can have a target audience where they can review their progress before it gets integrated into the larger scale of things.

To use the tool, you need to be familiar with the tool itself and with how it will be incorporated into the culture.

I have been using CloudBees for about a month.

I haven’t faced any issues with the solution’s stability.

I have no issues or complaints with the solution’s scalability.

We had just got to the licensing part of CloudBees, signed up, and got ready to use it. We were going to apply it to a couple of our projects, but our project was put on hold due to budgetary constraints. We really didn't get much further on the tool other than doing some independent research and studying it.

To use the tool, you probably need to do some onboarding. To use the tool, you need to be familiar with the tool itself and with how it will be incorporated into the culture. You have to be familiar with those who use it and those who get reports or information from it. The solution is worth the money.

Although CloudBees may not be the tool for everybody, I would definitely recommend that people review it and see for themselves how it can help them.

I would ask a new user to look at the main website and understand what this tool has to offer. I would also ask them to do some independent research. There are a lot of YouTube videos out there that could help break down or containerize the information they might be looking for.

They should talk with individuals who have used the tool before and get their impression. They should sign up for the free trial and see what they think about it. There are several different ways to go.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

We started with the continuous integration product and have now adopted continuous deployment for my current projects. We have a cloud-based product for other environments, like our dev environment and one of our CAT environments. These are the two environments we are using right now. Initially, we mainly used CloudBees for continuous integration. Now, we are utilizing both CloudBees for continuous integration and CloudBees CD for deployment.

When a build starts in CloudBees, it progresses from continuous integration to continuous deployment and monitoring. These are the three areas we're focusing on. We have successfully onboarded over 150 applications, which allows us to gather deployment and CI/CD pipeline metrics. We also have a dedicated service template for different application types, such as Java with Maven, .NET using MSBuild, and Node.js. 

We use CloudBees for continuous integration, deployment, and monitoring. We also started leveraging CloudBees CD Analytics for enhanced metrics and insights.

We deploy several applications using ECS and EKS, enabling us to achieve blue-green deployments. This allows for rolling updates and changes, benefiting many of our customers.

Another important aspect is our analytics capabilities. By leveraging these analytics, we can identify areas for improvement and increase our deployment frequency. We can predict trends and forecast business needs.

We are a centralized team that provides all the CI/CD and automation best practices for our internal teams. We chose a cloud-based product because it allows for end-to-end process automation. Using Cloud-based CI and CD, we can achieve effective release orchestration, enabling us to plan new releases efficiently.

One standout feature is build promotion. With this feature, we can promote builds across different environments with a single click, simplifying our workflow significantly. Additionally, we can easily identify where errors occur at any stage, making it straightforward to resolve issues.

Our automation supports not only on-premises deployments but also integrates with cloud solutions like AWS, GCP, and Azure. This flexibility allows us to deploy in both on-prem and cloud environments.

When I started with CloudBees, I found the configuration at the CD level to be quite challenging when creating end-to-end orchestration or release execution flows.

If industry-standard templates were available—based on surveys of what other companies are doing with their deployment models—it would simplify the configuration process. Collecting this information and providing standardized templates would make it much easier for teams to configure and use the platform.

Most of our configurations were done manually. On the CI side, customization options or APIs could improve the experience when dealing with Kubernetes execution or pod template configurations. 

It would be beneficial to integrate AI solutions like ChatGPT into our CI and CD processes. Many distributed networks and CI tools, like GitLab, are adopting such integrations.

I have been using CloudBees for three and a half years.

When we started using cloud technologies, we faced initial challenges. We initially opted for CloudBees and later integrated CloudBees CD. We encountered setup and stability issues at that time, including connectivity problems and occasional downtimes. The system is now running smoothly.

It's scalable because we've deployed it on high-throughput servers, allowing for efficient operation. The applications can be deployed without any interruptions.

We have 200+ users using this solution.

When we interact with the CloudBees team, we utilize the CloudBees University for support. This platform provides access to technical expertise, and if we need customized solutions, we can reach out to CloudBees representatives through the university.

Positive

When I started working with CloudBees, we focused on creating service catalogs. Given that we have over 2,000 components and applications, we follow various deployment strategies, including ECS-based, SAML-based, and Windows IIS-based deployments. Each of these requires specific template configurations.

We also explored blue-green deployments involving customized configurations we've implemented externally. While I’ve noticed some templates already available, expanding the library of deployment strategy templates would be beneficial. Adding templates for Tomcat, WebLogic, WebSphere, and Node.js deployments would enhance support for our diverse solutions.

Once we onboard an application, we hand off the maintenance and deployment responsibilities to the application team. Our role is to provide the initial solution and support them in getting started.

We have a team of twenty. It takes us one or two days to onboard a new application. This efficiency is due to our well-defined templates and process documentation. When a new application team approaches us for their DevOps journey, we can onboard them quickly, often within one or two days, with an end-to-end solution.

We assess their current deployment setup. If it aligns with our existing processes, we begin onboarding immediately. If not, we work with them to create a suitable deployment model. We have a solid understanding of our major deployment procedures, which allows one person to establish a complete end-to-end solution in about a day.

Once the application is onboarded, the application team takes over the entire release flow. We’re available to provide guidance and support if they encounter any issues or need training.

Even with full automation, some level of maintenance is necessary. Currently, we have a dedicated SRE team to handle this. Our DevOps journey with CI/CD involves a combination of various tools, not just the CloudBees CD product.

Some applications are heavily dependent on GitLab. We are currently focusing on migrating a few of these applications and building them directly on GitLab.

I recommend this solution for smaller projects or teams, as it can be quite effective for them. For those seeking a consolidated CI/CD and comprehensive metrics solution, CloudBees CD is an excellent choice.

Overall, I rate the solution an eight out of ten.

The primary use case for CloudBees is for continuous integration and deployment. It is primarily used for production deployments. We use it to trigger Autobahn, such as CloudBees, well in advance to clear out many issues upfront, trigger change requests, and test in various environments to be ready with the production deployment on the actual date.

CloudBees has helped our organization by integrating with various systems like version one, GitHub, and PDSM. It reduces the need for documentation by automating processes, saving time when creating documents and testing the application. This reduces the amount of time spent on deployments and helps pull out all the test results and create change requests, providing a more streamlined process for deployment.

The most beneficial aspect is that CloudBees integrates with everything, like version one, GitHub, and PDSM. It automates documentation and testing processes, reducing the need to create documents manually. By creating automated processes, it saves time and effort.

It could improve the document upload process. Currently, documents need to be uploaded manually to the PDSM request. An enhancement could be to have a feature where you can upload documents directly to go into the PDSM request.

For about two to three years, approximately two and a half to three years.

CloudBees has improved a lot over time. Initially, there were challenges setting it up, but once we understood its functions and processes, there were no stability issues.

CloudBees is scalable as it integrates with various complex systems and offers the flexibility to scale to many other application integrations beyond those currently used.

I have not personally interacted with customer service or support since the DevOps team handles template creation and maintenance, and they might have contacted support during the initial phase.

Positive

Before CloudBees, we did not use a similar tool. However, we are currently considering a transition to GitHub Actions.

The initial setup involved creating a template that checks pull requests in GitHub. It verifies approvals, mergers, and other criteria necessary for a build. The setup includes extensive integration with other systems, stringent checks, and a series of deployment stages from QA to production.

The DevOps team is responsible for creating templates and handling integration with various systems. They play a crucial role in supporting the implementation and deployment processes.

The measurable benefits of using CloudBees include a significant amount of time saved during deployment because of the automation and integration capabilities it offers.

I am not aware of the pricing, setup cost, or licensing details for CloudBees.

We are currently using GitHub Actions, with an effort to transition from CloudBees to GitHub Actions.

Follow the guidelines and step-by-step processes thoroughly. If you encounter integration issues with your tools, seek support from CloudBees to ensure integration. Once set up, CloudBees is a reliable tool for deployment.

I'd rate the solution nine out of ten.

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.

We use a pipeline to deploy our application. All our organization checks and requirements are added to the CloudBees pipelines, ensuring code quality and checking vulnerabilities. We use Jenkins and SonarQube as part of the deployment process.

CloudBees has streamlined our deployment process. Previously, deployment involved manual file transfers and checks, which were time-consuming. Now, with CloudBees, many tasks are automated, making our work easier and more efficient.

CloudBees assists by automating tasks, previously done manually, in the pipeline setup. This saves time and improves efficiency. The features set rules that are regularly updated, reducing the need for constant oversight. One-click deployment processes also highlight the flexibility and ease of the platform.

Sometimes, there are performance issues, however, they may be due to our organization's configuration. Currently, I do not have specific improvements in mind as these might be related to our side.

Previously, our organization had an on-premise solution, but we have moved to the cloud version.

Due to security constraints within our organization, the performance can appear slow. It is difficult to discern if the issue is with CloudBees or our organization's configuration.

CloudBees is scalable, but I cannot provide specific details on how this scalability impacts us.

We experience issues with the CloudBees pipelines occasionally, like resource limits or permission errors. The DevOps team generally resolves these, and I would rate CloudBees support eight out of ten.

Positive

Before CloudBees, we used FTP for deployment, which involved no pipelines.

The setup was managed by a separate team. My experience starts with using the product, which was straightforward.

A separate team, the DevOps team, manages the CloudBees setup and any technical support needed.

CloudBees saves time and resources by executing automated deployment processes, which would otherwise have been manual and time-consuming.

I am not aware of the pricing, setup cost, or licensing details.

I have not evaluated other solutions, as my interaction began with CloudBees directly.

I would recommend CloudBees, especially to those using traditional ways of deployment, because it simplifies and automates many processes.