CAF Project (CI/CD Implementation)

Background: We needed a CI platform that would enable faster building and automatic deployment to our dev environments. The tools for this finance company are heavily restricted, so the tech team was spending an inordinate amount of time trying to figure out what to use and how to execute necessary tasks. The security constraints imposed on them limited them significantly – particularly when it came to the use of plugins.

Because of this, they were forced to use extensive bash scripts to supplement the tools provided. Another huge challenge was the need to trial all possible solutions for each of the necessary steps to be confident they designed things correctly. Finally, they had to figure out how to incorporate BladeLogic into the CI/CD picture.

Goals: Implement CI/CD to our development process.

Solution & Results: We used Jenkins to provide the orchestration needed for each build and deployment. With Jenkins, we were able to make the connection to Nexus repository, pull source code from BitBucket, and create the BladeLogic packages. Unfortunately, due to all of the internal security restrictions, we could only rely on basic Jenkins capabilities. Our team wanted to use Groovy scripts from the onset, but we ended up filling pre- and post-build steps, replacing several plugins with bash scripts (as the Jenkins agent is on RHEL).

With Jenkins, we had great results, including:

• A simple-to-use pipeline for CI/CD
• Automation of deployment
• Faster development process