Difference Between Spinnaker and Jenkins
Jenkins is an extendable continuous integration open-source server. It has more than 300 + plugins support for testing and building of software projects. Similarly, Spinnaker is also an open-source continuous delivery server for releasing software changes at a very high speed. Developed by Netflix, Spinnaker is the most widely used Continuous delivery server currently in production and used by thousands of teams for deployment purposes. Spinnaker can be classified for Continuous Deployment purposes, while Jenkins can be classified under Continuous Integration purpose. However, Spinnaker vs Jenkins is an open-source tool for efficiency in the software development process.
Head to Head Comparison Between Spinnaker and Jenkins(Infographics)
Below are the Top 7 comparison between Spinnaker vs Jenkins:
Key Differences Between Spinnaker and Jenkins
The key differences between Spinnaker vs Jenkins are as follows:
- The first and foremost difference is that users think that Spinnaker is a build tool, but the truth is it’s not a build tool; in fact, it can be integrated with build tools like Jenkins.
- To deploy AWS Amazon Web Services in your project, Spinnaker API is used in Jenkins jobs.
- For releasing software, Jenkins is used for continuous integration in the development process, which helps maintain everything online with ease through one master server.
- For releasing software, Spinnaker is used for continuous delivery in the development process, which helps in maintaining everything online such as starting jobs and monitoring progress in the process.
- Spinnaker was introduced in the market to combine Continuous Integration (CI) and Continuous Delivery (CD) together.
- Spinnaker is designed for cloud deployment purposes, whereas Jenkins isn’t. Therefore, for implementing cloud deployment in Jenkins, you have to write the external script in the pipeline scripting manually.
- Spinnaker is an open-source continuous delivery platform for cloud-based enterprises’ deployment at a small and large scale, whereas Jenkins is usually suitable for smaller divisions.
- If you are working with Jenkins and you want to make your deployment phase faster and flexible, then spinnaker can be used for that purpose.
- You can have a complete dashboard in Spinnaker with features including resource management and multiple cloud environments, whereas Jenkins has no such dashboard, but with the help of plugins, this feature can be implemented.
- The pipeline feature in Spinnaker is cloud-centered for continuous delivery, whereas the Jenkins pipeline feature is server-centered for continuous integration purposes.
- Jenkins performs better than Spinnaker when the task is related to running multiple test cases, building packages for classes and, most important, SCM (Source Control Management).
Spinnaker vs Jenkins Comparison Table
Given below are the Major Difference between Spinnaker vs Jenkins:
| Basis of Comparison |
Spinnaker |
Jenkins |
| Cloud Deployment and Management | Similarly, Spinnaker was designed for Continuous Delivery purposes only, but with Ci and CD combination, a user can easily create load balancers, executing rollbacks and multi-cloud deployments.
Spinnaker can easily do all these tasks without any custom scripts or code in the pipeline SCM. |
Jenkins was designed for Continuous Integration purposes only, but with increasing competition plugin was introduced for deployment over the cloud, and for that, a user must have to write an external script for continuous delivery over the cloud in the software development process. |
| Community Support | Whereas, Spinnaker is one of the most used open-source Continuous Delivery tool in the market currently, with millions of deployment over the cloud. Therefore, community support from Spinnaker is also very strong. You can query about anything related to Spinnaker through Stack Overflow, and you will be getting your response through the community. | Jenkins is one of the most used open-source Continuous integration tools in the market currently. Therefore, with fame, there comes the price, which is community support from Jenkins. You can query about anything related to Jenkins through Reddit Thread, and you will be getting your response through the community in the minimum possible time. |
| Dashboard | Similarly, Spinnaker also provides dashboard support with all in one feature so that a user can keep an eye on the deployment, resource management and compilation of the task effectively as it is very fast and flexible when it comes to continuous delivery in the project. Spinnaker provides all this into one cloud package. | Jenkins provides dashboard feature through plugin installation according to the current requirements in the software as Azure DevOps can be used with Jenkins if you want to see the dashboard for the project with all the useful information of the project such as the number of builds, failed builds, the task assigned by whom and many more with burnout chart. |
| Reliability | Spinnaker is reliable on the one purpose, which is continuous Delivery with full flexibility and unlimited plugin support, but it cannot be used for integration over the cloud, unlike Jenkins. It has all in one master dashboard features for cloud providers. | Jenkins is reliable on the one purpose, which is continuous integration with complete flexibility and unlimited plugin support, but it cannot be used for deployment over the cloud, unlike Spinnaker. |
| Market Trend | Whereas Spinnaker is used by entelo, Top Hat, LaunchDarkly and Chime for continuous delivery purposes in their application. It gives fast and flexible delivery of packages over the cloud in the quickest possible way. | Jenkins is used by one of the biggest social media organization called Facebook. Netflix, Lyft is the other users of the Jenkins Continuous integration tool in their application for integration over the different servers. |
| Integration Tools | Spinnaker Continuous Delivery tool can be integrated with tools like GitHub, Git, Docker, Slack, and Amazon EC2. Which integration tools best fit your project completely depends upon the project requirement. | Jenkins Continuous Integration tool can be integrated with tools like Slack, Datadog, BrowserStack, Azure DevOps and Coveralls. Which integration tools best fit your project completely depends upon the project requirement. |
| Alternatives | Whereas alternative for Spinnaker is TeamCity, Bamboo and Apache Maven. | Circle CI and Travis CI are the alternatives to the Jenkins CI. |
Conclusion
For large and small enterprise cloud-based projects where all features can be seen in one dashboard, then Spinnaker’s open source is the best tool with the continuous delivery feature. Similarly, for small and sever based continuous integration purposes in software development, Jenkins can be used in projects.
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