CloudBees CI add-on for Amazon EKS blueprints

6 min read

This blog is co-authored between Carlos Rodriguez Lopez and Ian Kurtz from CloudBees and Welly Siauw from Amazon Web Services.

Deploy CloudBees CI to Amazon Web Services (AWS) Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS) clusters

If you are reading this, I’m sure you know Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (Amazon EKS) allows you to easily run tooling and plugins (commonly referred to as add-ons) within Kubernetes clusters that are developed by the Kubernetes open-source community. With such a large number of tooling choices and design patterns available to you, building a tailored Amazon EKS cluster that meets your application’s specific needs can take a significant amount of time. 

Here come Amazon EKS blueprints to the rescue! Think of them as a new way to effortlessly whip up Amazon EKS clusters that are preconfigured with everything your software delivery team needs. These blueprints are comprised of Infrastructure as Code (IaC) modules that set up teams with an immutable Amazon EKS cluster for CloudBees CI, with all the essential operational tools needed to begin running workloads, and ready to roll out across other accounts and regions in Amazon Web Services (AWS).

So, where does CloudBees CI come into play? CloudBees CI, a robust continuous integration (CI) tool, is built upon Jenkins, the widely-used CI/CD orchestrator. CloudBees CI is designed specifically for large enterprises that already leverage Jenkins, but require additional functionality in governing, scaling, and maintaining how it is deployed and used by delivery teams. A notable, recent enhancement for CloudBees CI is High Availability (HA) mode, which introduces active-active HA and hibernation mode, allowing you to "turn off" idle controllers, so they do not incur costs when not in use. While there are numerous capabilities to call out, our focus here is understanding the connection between CloudBees CI and Amazon EKS blueprints.

CloudBees is thrilled to announce its integration into the expansive Amazon EKS blueprints community as an AWS partner add-on. This collaboration simplifies the adoption and exploration of CloudBees CI’s enterprise features through two key components:

By integrating CloudBees CI with Amazon EKS blueprints, deployment speeds are significantly accelerated, granting quicker access to the extensive features of CloudBees CI on Amazon EKS. This partnership with AWS ensures that our mutual customer base remains at the forefront of innovation, equipped with the latest updates in both AWS and CloudBees solutions. The creation of the CloudBees CI Amazon EKS Terraform add-on, in alignment with AWS well-architected framework, creates a swift path for organizations to configure and manage fully operational Amazon EKS clusters that are bootstrapped with the operational software required to build, deploy, and operate their workloads.

So, whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, the CloudBees CI add-on for Amazon EKS blueprints now provides a sustainable deployment framework for onboarding enterprise Jenkins workloads with speed and at scale. Let’s see how this is done.


Note: CloudBees CI add-on for Amazon EKS blueprints replaces the legacy CloudBees CI AWS Quick Start as the solution for quick deploy in Amazon EKS. The legacy CloudBees CI AWS Quick Start has been deprecated.


Blueprint 01:

Get started with the CloudBees CI on modern platforms in Amazon EKS by running this blueprint, which installs CloudBees CI on modern platforms and its prerequisites, to help you understand the minimum setup which includes:

Architecture Reference

Kubernetes cluster Reference

Blueprint 02:

Once you are familiar with CloudBees CI blueprint add-on: Get started, this blueprint presents a scalable architecture and configuration by adding:


Amazon EKS blueprints add-ons

Architecture

Kubernetes Cluster

Built with the new CloudBees platform

CloudBees is thrilled to announce that this Terraform module and its companion blueprints leverage the cutting-edge CloudBees platform for the blueprint CI builds! CloudBees platform actions orchestrated by workflows allow us to perform automated testing for each new release (refer to the .cloudbees folder).

Conclusion

Amazon EKS blueprints and CloudBees provides streamlined deployment of robust CI solutions on AWS EKS, leveraging the power of IaC. This solution simplifies the process, adheres to best practices, and significantly accelerates deployment times, allowing developers at any level to excel in their Kubernetes projects, with the latest innovations and intelligent capabilities at their fingertips.

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