Summary
We are excited to introduce the new Software Delivery Automation platform connecting, automating, and orchestrating the software delivery process from code to customer quickly and safely.
This release brings together CloudBees CD/RO (Continuous Delivery and Release Orchestration, previously CloudBees CD) and CloudBees CI as capabilities with a unified experience in the Software Delivery Automation platform. We are introducing new value across CloudBees CI and CloudBees CD/RO, with two new analytics dashboards driven by CloudBees CI data, new microservices modeling for Helm deployments, and much more.
Introducing Software Delivery Automation
Software Delivery Automation connects CloudBees CI and CloudBees CD, and Release Orchestration in a single platform. With this first release of Software Delivery Automation, we are introducing a new unified experience with new CloudBees Navigation seamlessly navigating across CloudBees CI, CloudBees CD/RO and CloudBees Analytics capabilities. A common installation experience on Kubernetes with a single Helm chart makes it easy to get started. New integrations connect CloudBees CI to the platform, with a data pipeline for streaming data from across the CI controllers to be stored centrally in the Software Delivery Automation platform. Existing CloudBees CD users upgrading to 10.1 Software Delivery Automation can now start taking advantage of CloudBees CI (Jenkins) to drive their CI processes.
This is just the first step with much more to come, bringing new innovation, visibility and seamless automation in end to end software delivery processes in a single platform.
Actionable insights for managing CloudBees CI infrastructure on CloudBees Analytics
Systems today are more distributed, more dynamic, and more complex than ever before, and teams don’t have a prescribed way of measuring and obtaining insights on the health of their Jenkins controllers to prevent unplanned downtimes and failures.
In this first release of CloudBees Software Delivery Automation, we are centralizing analytics from CloudBees CI and CloudBees CD into CloudBees Analytics (previously DevOps Insight) capabilities. CloudBees Analytics is the new single source of truth to monitor and optimize the underlying CI and CD infrastructure across the enterprise.
With the new insights for CloudBees CI, teams can take action to enhance build performance, right-size workloads over demand cycles, prevent unplanned downtimes, get a holistic view of plugin usage across all pipeline jobs, and more.
A new data pipeline seamlessly sends data from each CI controller directly to CloudBees Analytics, where data is presented in two new dashboards:
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Workload Insights: Workload Insights show historical workload growth across demand cycles. Infrastructure teams can spot patterns, capacity issues and unexpected spikes around system/controller health, enabling the admin to take preventative measures.
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Plugin Usage: Teams can track and monitor usage of plugins across all Freestyle and Pipeline jobs, prioritize most used plugins for upgrade activity, and review and audit all unused plugins.
These dashboards provide shared services teams with predictability and reliability, allowing them to proactively improve the overall CloudBees CI infrastructure.
Simplified deployments to Kubernetes with new microservices models
Microservices provide the ideal architecture for continuous delivery, with the benefits of giving teams independence, improving deployment frequency, reducing infrastructure costs and more. In the 10.1 release we are introducing a new way to model and deploy microservices in CloudBees CD/RO. A new intuitive user experience makes it easy to get started modeling and deploying microservices in a few simple guided steps. New microservices objects enable best practices for microservice definition and deployment, integrating tightly with Helm and Kubernetes. Environment inventory views provide detailed cluster views, with container version and source information—giving a clear picture of what is deployed where at any time.
Additional updates
This release includes new features and capabilities from preview releases between August-December 2020, including:
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External credential management: Existing credentials in CloudBees CD can now reference secrets in external credential providers and be integrated everywhere credentials are used today. The extensible model introduces support for two credential management systems: CyberArk and HashiCorp Vault.
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CloudBees CD pipeline audit reports: Three new native out of the box audit reports that collect pipeline run data and present it in an easy to read format, simplifying the audit process.
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Automatic discovery of native CloudBees CI controllers: A new CI configuration option connects directly to the CloudBees CI Operations Center, and automatically discovers all of the connected Jenkins Controllers, so creating a new configuration just takes a few button clicks.
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Redesigned UI: New for artifact management, schedules and server settings.
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Redesigned webhooks: Webhooks now support applications and service catalogs.
Plugins
We continuously develop and improve plugins used across DevOps processes, including:
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EC-Git: A new plugin, providing:
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Added support for revamped webhooks and external credentials.
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Added support to specify Git repository as a Microservice definition source.
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EC-GitHub and EC-BitBucket: updated to support revamped WebHooks.
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EC-Helm plugin: updated to support the new microservices models.
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Updates to numerous plugins to support new external credentials.
Download instructions
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Download CloudBees Software Delivery Automation at CloudBees Downloads
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Release notes and product documentation are available for CloudBees CD/RO.
Supported configurations
See supported platforms and system requirements for CloudBees CD/RO for a complete list of supported platforms and configurations.
Upgrade
Upgrades to v10.1 LTS are supported from CloudBees CD 8.x, 9.x and 10.x versions. For complete install instructions, please see Installation section of the documentation.
Support
Contact Support with questions related to this release by going to the CloudBees technical support site at https://support.cloudbees.com/ and submitting a support request. Improvement requests can be filed at https://www.cloudbees.com/feedback.