Knapsack Pro
Knapsack Pro
Rancher Pipelineshttps://rancher.com/docs/rancher/v2.x/en/project-admin/tools/pipelines/ |
Gitlab CIhttps://about.gitlab.com/product/continuous-integration/ |
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|---|---|---|
| Unique feature |
DevOps tool for container orchestration
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AutoDev Ops / Allows keeping code management and CI in the same place
|
| 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 Very generous free plans for both the SaaS version as well as the on premise version. |
| Predictable pricing |
Yes It's free! |
Yes Clear and affordable pricing for both SaaS and self-hosted versions. |
| Support / SLA |
Yes Paid support available: https://rancher.com/pricing/ |
Yes All paid plans include next business day 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 Easily configure jobs you want to be run in parallel via the YML config file (gitlab-ci.yml) |
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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) |
Yes
|
| Containers support / Build environment |
Yes
|
Yes The Docker Container Registry is integrated into GitLab by default |
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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
|
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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 |
Yes
|
| Self-hosted option |
Yes
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Yes
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| 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 Defined via YML config files |
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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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Yes
|
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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
|
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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 Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Ruby specific need that may arise. |
| Specific language support: JavaScript |
N/A Pipelines / CI is just a small part of Rancher. No specific support mentioned. |
Yes Although not built into GitLab CI by default, the Docker support allows solving any Javascript specific need that may arise. |
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Integrations
1st party support for common tools (like Slack notifications, various VCS platforms, etc) |
Yes Integrations available for GitLab, GitHub and Bitbucket |
Yes Plenty of third party integrations available throughout GitLab, most notably Kubernetes and GitHub, but also plenty of others: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/integration/README.html |
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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. |
Yes Provides a REST API and a (new) GraphQL API, with plans to maintain the GraphQL API only going forward. Allows doing almost anything that can be done via the interface, at least in terms of CI needs. |
| Auditing |
Yes Allows logging to various systems (Kafka, Elastic, etc) which should make audit possible |
Yes
|
| 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. |
The Auto DevOps feature might be interesting to people looking for a very hands-off experience with getting a CI/CD process up and running https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/topics/autodevops/ |