consul-template VS Jenkins

The Hashicorp corporation has made a huge impact in providing valuable tools and platforms in the cloud ecosystem. The advantage of using the tools they provide, such as Terraform, Vault, and Packer, is that they all have the same language, Hashicorp Configuration Language (HCL). This means you can easily pick up any of these tools by learning HCL, which is similar to JSON. This approach can be useful when choosing tools to learn or use for a project.

Terraform is an open-source infrastructure as a code tool. It is designed by HashiCorp and written in Go Programming Language. Terraform is used to automate the creation of DevOps infrastructure and tasks. Terraform provisions and configures your DevOps infrastructure. It spins up new servers, creates load balancers, and node groups, and performs network configurations. Terraform is mostly applied to provision resources on cloud providers like AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. It can automate and provision infrastructure on any cloud platform. We will use Terraform to set up an Azure Kubernetes Service Cluster that has all the necessary cloud resources.

It can be time-consuming to create and manage the infrastructure that drives your software applications as they grow and become larger. Also, what about ongoing updates and releases of new features? Luckily, there is a solution to this problem in the form of a tool designed by Hashicorp called Terraform. This allows us to define our infrastructure in a central configuration file without having to create it on every provider platform we use.

HashiCorp Sentinel: Sentinel is a PAC tool developed by HashiCorp that can be used in tools such as Terraform, Vault, and Nomad. Sentinel supports writing rules in programming languages such as HCL to automate the enforcement of security and compliance policies.

Terraform is an infrastructure as code tool (IAC) created by HashiCorp that lets you automate cloud and on-prem resources. It uses configuration files written in HashiCorp Configuration Language (HCL) to declare resources (infrastructure objects) and define dependencies between them. To put it simply, this tool allows you to write a few configuration files and build a whole system’s architecture on the cloud by running a couple of commands. I found this to be a more efficient alternative to clicking through a console to create resources manually.

It was clear back in 2021 that Lob needed to consolidate how we run code and none of our current tools were up to the task; it wasn’t a matter of if Lob would upgrade to something new, but when. The Platform team kicked off a research project to find Lob’s next service platform. Forever ago (back in 2019) we investigated migrating to Kubernetes, a popular but notoriously difficult-to-manage tool for this sort of thing, but that project fizzled out for many reasons, forcing us to consider something else. We chose Nomad which offers a comparable feature set to Kubernetes in a much more streamlined package. Nomad is developed by HashiCorp, a leader in the DevOps space, and is used by companies like Pandora, Cloudflare, Internet Archive, and Roblox.

If however, you have an application service that needs support for 2+ ports, because you know, Kubernetes supports this, I would recommend avoiding Consul Connect, as it is not functional to meet minimum requirements for a service mesh. Perhaps someday, when Hashicorp prioritizes basic functionality and usability in future version, this product can be considered.

Looks a lot like Hashicorp (a technology company), maybe too similar, and not particularly evocative IMO.

AWS VPC is a simple example. This feature really shines when building reusable infrastructure-as-code for Network Firewall or even Network ACLs. Anything that simplifies something and reduces or eliminates any hacks required to reach a logical outcome is super valuable. Great work finally driving this one home HashiCorp.

Jenkins is a highly extensible Java-based CI/CD automation server. It is open-source and self-hosted and enables you to automate, build, and deploy your software. The tool seamlessly integrates with various version control systems, cloud providers, and third-party applications, making it a versatile choice for modern development environments.

For instance, IDPs can automatically trigger a deployment process in Jenkins or CircleCI when a developer pushes code to a Git repository.

Familiarize yourself with tools like Jenkins, Travis CI, GitLab CI, and others that facilitate these practices.

Jenkins: An open-source automation server that can be used to set up CI/CD pipelines.

Jenkins is an open-source automation tool that allows developers to build, test and deploy software.

Choosing the right CI/CD platform and mastering YAML configuration are critical steps in optimizing your software development process. First, choose a CI/CD platform from popular options such as Jenkins, Travis CI, CircleCI, GitLab CI/CD, or GitHub Actions that meets the needs of your project and integrates seamlessly with your development stack.

Jenkins is a Java based CI/CD system that can be self hosted. In order to initiate builds, Jenkins utilizes a component called an agent to execute build commands. These agents can be a constantly running service or part of an on demand service such as a cloud provider or Docker containers. Kubernetes is one such solution to deploying build agents on demand. This article will look at how to setup Kubernetes as a provider for Jenkins build agents.

In this article, we briefly discussed some popular CI/CD platforms for React Native and why they are crucial in the programming world. We also included some honorable mentions, Jenkins CI and Bitrise, in our comparison table. It is important to remember that every project is different, and therefore it is important to evaluate each tool’s advantages and disadvantages.

Originally, I was using Jenkins (Yes, the CI pipeline java app) for this, but it was clear that is not its purpose, and it was fairly clunky. The only real upside was direct git support, but I don't mind incorporating git pulls into my jobs themselves.