How do I choose between Jenkins and GitHub Actions for a high-scale CI/CD enterprise pipeline?

All answers to this question.

Transitioning to GitHub Actions was a game-changer for our vertical. While Jenkins is incredibly powerful due to its vast library of community plugins, the maintenance "tax" of managing your own controller and build agents becomes a massive bottleneck as you scale. GitHub Actions provides a more integrated experience, especially if your source code already lives there. It handles the runner scaling automatically in the cloud, which saved our DevOps team roughly 15 hours a week in server patching and configuration. However, if you have highly complex, legacy on-prem requirements, Jenkins' granular control is still king.

   Answered 2024-05-16 by Jennifer Thompson

Are you specifically looking at the cost per build minute or the complexity of the YAML configuration files for your multi-stage deployments?

   Answered 2024-05-18 by Robert Wilson

• Most of our concern is actually the cost per build minute. We run thousands of small unit tests, and the GitHub hosted runner costs are starting to pile up compared to our self-hosted Jenkins instances. We need to know if the ease of use justifies the monthly invoice increase or if we should stick to self-hosting.

     Commented 2024-05-20 by Mark Davis

I recommend a hybrid approach. Use GitHub Actions for the standard CI linting and unit tests, but keep Jenkins for the heavy-duty deployment orchestration.

   Answered 2024-05-22 by Amanda White

• I agree with Amanda. A hybrid model allows you to leverage the speed of GitHub while maintaining the specialized deployment logic you've already built in Jenkins.

     Commented 2024-05-23 by Sarah Miller