Rancher Pipelineshttps://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/pipelines/ |
Github Actionshttps://github.com/features/actions |
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Unique feature |
DevOps tool for container orchestration
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Best GitHub integration possible
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Type of product |
On Premise
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SaaS / On Premise
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Offers a free plan |
Yes Free, open source project |
Yes The on premise plan (not yet available) will be free, 2000 build minutes included in the free cloud plan. Completely free plan for open source projects. |
Predictable pricing |
Yes It's free! |
Yes (partial) While it's clear what the cost is (priced per build-minute), figuring out costs can be a hassle, especially as the price can vary quite a bit depending on commits to the project. One advantage for GitHub Actions is that the tiers define a maximum amount of minutes, so it's easier to predict the final cost. You can also purchase aditional runners with pricing dependent on the platform (MacOS, Linux, Windows) |
Support / SLA |
Yes Paid support available: https://rancher.com/pricing/ |
Yes Community support available for any tier, unclear at what point and if dedicated support is available. Safe to assume that eneterprise clients can access technical support. |
Paralellism
Every CI servers tends to address this differently (parallel, distributed, build matrix). Some of it is just marketing, and some is just nuance. For this table, parallel means that tasks can be run concurrently on the same machine, distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro |
Yes You can run multiple parallel steps within a build stage |
Yes Matrix builds allow concurrent jobs, even multi-platform. |
Distributed builds
distributed means that tasks can be scaled horizontally, on multiple machines How to split tests in parallel in the optimal way with Knapsack Pro |
N/A Unclear from the documentation (probably not) |
N/A No specific mention, but given the fact that tasks can be run on multiple platforms, it's likely that distributed builds are also available. |
Containers support / Build environment |
Yes
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Yes Linux, macOS, Windows, and containers, or run directly in a VM. |
Analytics / Status overview
Analytics and overview referrs to the ability to, at a glance, see what's breaking (be it a certain task, or the build for a specific project) |
Yes Not particularly clear, but it appears you can monitor stats in a Grafana dashboard: https://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/monitoring/ |
Yes Minimal status overview definitely available, with live logs and GitHub integration. Unclear how far it goes. |
Management support
How easy is it to manage users / projects / assign roles and permissions and so on |
Yes User management is available, with specific roles assigned, or permissions to certain resources and projects |
N/A Unclear from the available documentation |
Self-hosted option |
Yes
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Yes Coming soon, not available yet. |
Hosted plans / SaaS |
No
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Yes
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Build pipelines
A continuous delivery pipeline is a description of the process that the software goes through from a new code commit, through testing and other statical analysis steps all the way to the end-users of the product. |
Yes Pipelines as code (YML files), but also manageable via the UI |
Yes Called GitHub Action Workflows, they are defined in separate Docker containers, using the YAML syntax (they used to support HCL, but they're migrating away from that) |
Reports
Reports are about the abilty to see specific reports (like code coverage or custom ones), but not necesarily tied in into a larger dashboard. |
Yes
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N/A Unclear from the available documentation |
Ecosystem
Besides the official documentation and software, is there a large community using this product? Are there any community-driven tools / plugins that you can use? |
N/A
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Yes Thanks to the large following, GitHub Actions already enjoys a wide varierty of available pre-made workflows, which you can browse right on the homepage: https://github.com/features/actions |
Specific language support: Ruby
Some CI servers have built-in support for parsing RSpec or Istanbul output for example and we mention those. Some others make it even easier by detecting Gemfiles or package.json and automate parts of the process for the developer. |
N/A Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned. |
Yes Unclear how, but they mention Ruby support specifically on the homepage |
Specific language support: JavaScript |
N/A Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned. |
Yes Unclear how, but they mention Javascript (Node.js) support specifically on the homepage |
Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc) |
Yes Integrations available for GitLab, GitHub and Bitbucket |
Yes Integrations made possible via the shared third party workflows available (AWS, Azure, Zeit, Kubernetes and many more) |
API
Custom integreation is available, via an API or otherwise, it's mentioned separately as it allows further customization than any of the Ecosystem/Integration options |
Yes REST API available. It provides introspection and documentation: https://github.com/rancher/api-spec/blob/master/specification.md#filtering. It should offer enough access to allow building whatever customizations or integrations with 3rd party tools deemed necessary. |
N/A Unclear at the moment, but assume GitHub Actions will be integrated with the GitHub GraphQL API (one of the more mature GraphQL API implementations available) |
Auditing |
Yes Allows logging to various systems (Kafka, Elastic, etc) which should make audit possible |
N/A
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Additional notes |
Rancher is a full software stack for container orchestration, going as far as building their own Linux distribution (RancherOS). Using Rancher seems more like a decision to be made considering all other features Rancher offers, not just the CI server. Also worth noting that Rancher uses Jenkins under the hood, but the engine is locked so projects can't just be migrated between the two. |
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