Jenkins on AWS

What is this?

This project will build and deploy an immutable, fault tolerant, and cost effective Jenkins environment in AWS using ECS. All Jenkins images are managed within the repository (pulled from upstream) and fully configurable as code. Plugin installation is automated, including versioning, as well as configured through the Configuration as Code plugin.

Why

Managing Jenkins is hard. From plugin management and configuration details, to ensuring that the nodes are up to date and running, it's a lot of work and susceptible to issues.

Please note, this is an example and not production ready. You are still responsible for securing Jenkins (enabling TLS at the ALB, adding authentication, etc). This intent of this project is to provide an example of running Jenkins on ECS.

Architecture

Project Structure

./

./cdk/ <-- Deployment configuration

./cdk/docker/ <-- Dockerfiles and associated config files for Leader and Worker images. The cdk will build these images on a cdk deploy.

./cdk/app.py <-- cdk application file where all stacks are instantiated and built

./cdk/requirements.txt <-- Python module requirements

./cdk/jenkins/ <-- cdk stacks to deploy Jenkins environment

Requirements

To deploy this environment, we will use the aws-cdk

• Please follow the requirements to install from the cdk github repo
• Tested with the following version: 1.53.0 (build 6c326cb)

Fargate Jenkins (Leader and Workers)

Set config.ini

fargate_enabled = yes

EC2 Backed Leader and Fargate Workers

Set config.ini

ec2_enabled = yes

Validate configs and deploy

Navigate to the cdk directory, and run:

cdk synth

Output should look something like:

[user@computer cdk (cdk)]$ cdk synth
Successfully synthesized to jenkins-on-aws/cdk/cdk.out
Supply a stack name (JenkinsOnAWSNetwork, JenkinsOnAWSECS, JenkinsOnAWSWorker, JenkinsOnAWSJenkinsLeader) to display its template.

Feel free to check out the CloudFormation templates created by the cdk in the cdk.out directory

Let's deploy the environment! The below command will deploy all of the stacks required to get the environment up and running:

cdk deploy Jenkins*

Note: You will be prompted for approval during the stages of the deploy. Follow the instructions on the prompt when asked.

That's it! You now have a fully automated Jenkins implementation running on AWS Fargate with worker nodes automatically configured to run on an as needed basis.