How to Augment CI/CD by Running Pipelines on Kubernetes

DevOps practices require innovation to allow businesses to grow and not fall in line with traditional approaches and solutions. Now, the industry standard for container management and orchestration is Kubernetes. Because containers can be rapidly initiated, versioned, and shut down, they are a great fit for CI/CD in both build and test environments. 

As the end of the year quickly approaches, it’s safe to say that transitioning to running DevOps pipelines on Kubernetes is not a luxury — it’s a necessity. But the question is, how can DevOps professionals simplify and speed up CI/CD with Kubernetes? 

According to Puppet’s State of DevOps Report, 29% of DevOps organizations report that legacy architecture is a major roadblock for DevOps evolution in their organizations. By running DevOps pipelines on Kubernetes, developers and platform engineers can accelerate and simplify CI/CD to: 

• Save time
• Reduce the need for a larger team
• Simplify deployments
• Reduce errors

It has become common to use Kubernetes with compatible CI processes and tools like Jenkins, which has the most widespread adoption. In this article, we’re highlighting how running ionir as the Jenkins data platform simplifies and streamlines CI/CD pipelines to enable faster, more efficient deployments.

Jenkins and ionir Team Up to Scale CI/CD Pipelines

Running Jenkins with ionir as the data platform allows DevOps teams to rapidly and efficiently scale their CI/CD pipelines across multiple clouds and data centers. Since Jenkins offers a framework for building scalable CI/CD pipelines with a master and multiple slave nodes, it is the most common CI tool to use with Kubernetes. In fact, CNCF reports that 53% of DevOps organizations use Jenkins to run their CI/CD pipelines.

However, Jenkins users often face challenges when distributing load across multiple nodes in a Jenkins environment. These challenges increase build and test time making horizontal scaling slow. 

Yet, when paired with ionir, Jenkins users experience persistent, resilient, high-performance storage, and a set of data management capabilities that:

• Allow optimization of pipelines
• Significantly reduce the time for application delivery
• Reduce infrastructure and operational costs and complexity 
• Enable a flexible and agile infrastructure

Together, Jenkins and ionir work in unison to enhance CI/CD pipelines to create a flexible and agile infrastructure, enabling DevOps organizations to meet changing business needs and customer demands.

Creating a Flexible and Agile Infrastructure to Quickly React to Changing Demands

According to a recent survey, respondents cited their top three reasons for running DevOps pipelines on Kubernetes and containers are to:

1. Increase agility (70%)
2. Ensure consistency across build and test environments (67%)
3. Increase scalability (60%)

Let’s discuss all the ways in which Kubernetes (along with the right technology) work to augment CI/CD pipelines to enhance DevOps efficiency and optimize organizational outcomes.

1. Eliminate Data Wait Times

Data services platforms for Kubernetes offer scalability, instant clones, and data mobility to enable rapid scaling of Jenkins environments. This is accomplished by delivering data where it is needed instantly. The best data services platforms for K8s reduce the time to move data in CI/CD pipelines by up to 500x.

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For more information on data services platforms for Kubernetes and their benefits, download your copy of our white paper, Streamline CI/CD with ionir.

2. Enhance CI/CD with Flexible Testing

Flexible testing is easily accomplished when data is accessible in an instant. With the help of a data services platform for Kubernetes, persistent volumes of data move at the speed of applications, in any direction, to and from anywhere. 

Instead of requesting data and waiting for hours or days for the volume to deliver, developers can gain access to their data set immediately. This provides the opportunity for destructive testing. Once a data set is destroyed, developers can access data as it existed at a previous point in time in just seconds.

With the right technology supporting DevOps initiatives, organizations gain:

• Faster incremental builds
• Error-free, repeatable, and scalable testing 
• Broader coverage and better targeting of tests
• The ability to deliver applications faster with higher quality
  

3. Improve Product Quality with Production Data

Testing applications with real-life data greatly enhances the quality of testing. Yet, due to the challenges in providing frequent access to data, many DevOps professionals do little to no testing with production data. 

Running pipelines on Kubernetes enables any volume in a Kubernetes environment to be shared and copied with any other cluster environment. Allowing DevOps teams to use real data to optimize CI/CD pipelines and frequently update data sets.

4. Performance and Advanced Capability without the Complexity

A container-native storage and a data management platform that is fully programmable and microservices-based (like a data services platform for Kubernetes) offers a solution that is simple, future-proof and cloud ready for DevOps. With Kubernetes, developers no longer need to deal with the complexity of using legacy storage platforms to manage CI/CD pipelines.

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5. Eliminate Multiple Silos

Container-native storage solutions, like ionir, run on the same nodes (bare-metal servers or cloud instances) that run Jenkins in a Kubernetes cluster. Because there is no dedicated infrastructure needed for hosting separate storage and data management hardware, this solution delivers CAPEX savings of up to 50%.

Final Thoughts

To effectively accelerate and augment CI/CD pipelines, DevOps organizations must leverage the right tools and technology to adopt Kubernetes in order to:

• Boost productivity
• Quickly deliver quality applications
• Deliver a high ROI on digital transformation

ionir is the key to unlocking your CI/CD pipeline potential. See the endless possibilities for yourself — start your free trial today.