Set up CI/CD pipelines with Jenkins

Jenkins is an open source automation server that which supports building, deploying, and automating your application with the help of Jenkins Pipeline. Jenkins Pipeline is a suite of plugins that supports implementing and integrating continuous delivery pipelines into Jenkins. These plugins can be used to integrate with AWS App2Container to automate deployments for your applications. App2Container can help configure a Jenkins pipeline in your existing Jenkins environment.

For more information about using Jenkins, see the User Handbook overview on the Jenkins website.

Prerequisites

To configure Jenkins pipeline integration for your application container from App2Container, your application must meet the following criteria.

• A fully functional Jenkins server with the following plugins installed:

  • Pipeline

  • Pipeline: AWS Steps

  • Git

• One or more agent nodes, running Linux or Windows must be configured on the Jenkins server.

  Note

  The application container platform must match the platform of the agent node. For example, a Java application that runs on Linux, must use a Linux agent node for Jenkins. A .NET application that runs on Windows, must use a Windows agent node.

• Agent nodes must have the following tools installed:

  • AWS command line tool – To install the AWS CLI or Tools for Windows PowerShell on the agent nodes, follow the same steps that you used to set up your application servers and worker machines, except that you do not need to set up an AWS profile on the agent node. Agent nodes use the AWS profile that is configured on the Jenkins server.

  • Docker – The Docker engine installation varies by the operating system platform for the server or instance where you install it. For more information about the variations, see Install the Docker engine.

  • Git – For more information, see the 1.5 Getting Started - Installing Git chapter in the Pro Git guide, available free to read online.

• Agent nodes must be able to connect to AWS and run commands using the AWS CLI.

• The Jenkins server must have access to an existing Git repository for pipeline source. The following credentials and resources are required for pipeline builds:

  • Credentials created on the Jenkins server that are used to access the Git repository from the Jenkins agent node through SSH. The ID of the Jenkins credentials is required in pipeline.json configuration. For more information about SSH credentials on Jenkins, see the Using credentials chapter in the Jenkins User Handbook, available online.

  • An AWS profile on the Jenkins server that is used to access AWS resources from the Jenkins agent node when the pipeline runs.

• Credentials for App2Container to integrate with Jenkins resources must be created and stored in AWS Secrets Manager. For more information, see Create secrets for Jenkins pipelines

• The application server or worker machine where the App2Container generate pipeline command runs must be able to connect to the Git source repository and Jenkins server, using the secrets stored in Secrets Manager.

For more information about installing and configuring a Jenkins server, see the Installing Jenkins chapter in the Jenkins User Handbook, available online. The Jenkins User Documentation also includes tutorials and other reference materials.

Jenkins integration for App2Container workflow

The process for setting up Jenkins pipelines to refresh components for your application container integrates smoothly with the App2Container workflow. Applications follow all the standard steps through deployment. Jenkins integration happens in the pipeline step.

1. Before you run the generate pipeline command, review the pipeline.json file that was created by the generate app-deployment command. Configure the parameters for your Jenkins pipeline as follows:

   • Set the flags to enable Jenkins deployment.

     • sourceInfo

       • CodeCommit – enabled: false

       • ExistingGitRepo – enabled: true

       • AzureRepo – enabled: false

     • pipelineInfo

       • CodePipeline – enabled: false

       • Jenkins – enabled: true

       • AzureDevOps – enabled: false

   • In the ExistingGitRepo object, set the following parameters:

     • repositoryUri (string, required) – The URI of the Git repository to use for your pipeline. SSH access is required.

     • branch (string, required) – The name of the code branch in the Git repository to commit to.

     • sshKeyArn (string, required) – The ARN of the secret in Secrets Manager that is used to store the user name and SSH key for Git authentication from the Jenkins server.

   • In the pipelineInfo section Jenkins object, set the following parameters:

     • jenkinsServerUrl (string, required) – The URL of the Jenkins server. HTTPS is required for secure access.

     • nodeLabels (array of strings, required) – A list of the labels that must be attached to the Jenkins agent node that runs the pipeline. All labels specified must be present on the agent node for it to run.

     • apiTokenArn (string, required) – The ARN of the secret in Secrets Manager that is used to authenticate to the Jenkins server.

     • repoSshCredentialId (string, required) – The ID of the credential that you create on the Jenkins server, which is used to access the Git repository from the Jenkins agent node through SSH. For more information about SSH credentials on Jenkins, see the Using credentials chapter in the Jenkins User Handbook, available online.

     • awsCredentialId (string, required) – The AWS profile on the Jenkins server that is used to access AWS resources from the Jenkins agent node when the pipeline runs.

2. When you run the generate pipeline command, App2Container validates the properties in the pipeline.json file, and verifies that initial deployment to your container management service has been completed, and that your application is active.

   The generate pipeline command generates the following artifacts for Jenkins pipelines:

   • Jenkinsfile – App2Container uses the Declarative Pipeline syntax to produce the Jenkinsfile. The file contains the steps and stages (code, build, release, etc.) for the Jenkins pipeline. For more information about Jenkins pipeline syntax, see Pipeline Syntax on the Jenkins website.

     If you are not using the --deploy option with the generate pipeline command, you can customize the Jenkinsfile, and then use it to create your pipeline using the Jenkins user interface.

   • A config.xml file – If you are not using the --deploy option with the generate pipeline command, you can use the config.xml file, along with the Jenkinsfile to create your pipeline using the Jenkins REST API (JenkinsAPI). For more information, see the online documentation site: JenkinsAPI.

   • Amazon EKS CloudFormation template (for Amazon EKS deployment only) – If your application is deploying to Amazon EKS, the generate pipeline command generates a CloudFormation template to create a two-step pipeline. For more information about Amazon EKS deployments, see Deploy application containers to Amazon EKS with AWS App2Container

   Note

   If you are using CodeCommit as your source repository, App2Container creates an SSH key for the IAM user that is running the command. It provides that SSH key to the Jenkins server, so that Jenkins can access files in CodeCommit when it runs the pipeline.

   If you run the generate pipeline command with the --deploy option, App2Container creates the pipeline in Jenkins, and starts the pipeline build.