Mastering CloudBees CDRO for DevOps and Automation

CloudBees CDRO is a game-changer for organizations looking to streamline their software delivery processes. It's a powerful tool that helps teams automate and optimize their workflows.

With CloudBees CDRO, you can automate your entire delivery pipeline, from code check-in to deployment. This means less manual intervention and more time for your team to focus on innovation.

CloudBees CDRO supports multiple deployment models, including on-premises, cloud, and hybrid. This flexibility allows you to choose the deployment strategy that best fits your organization's needs.

By automating your delivery pipeline, you can reduce the time it takes to deliver software, which is critical for businesses that need to stay competitive in today's fast-paced market.

CloudBees CDRO is a robust platform that enables organizations to build and deploy applications at scale.

It provides a single pane of glass for monitoring and management, allowing teams to track and troubleshoot issues across multiple environments.

CloudBees CDRO is built on top of Jenkins, a popular open-source automation server, and integrates with other tools to provide a comprehensive DevOps experience.

This integration enables teams to automate and streamline their software delivery pipelines, reducing the time and effort required to get applications to market.

CloudBees CD/RO is a game-changer for software build and release management. It provides enterprise-class speed and scalability, making it easy to install and use on simple builds, yet scales to support the largest and most complex build and test processes.

CloudBees CD/RO distributes jobs in parallel across multiple resources for faster overall cycle time. This means you can get your code out the door faster.

CloudBees CD/RO supports multiple teams working in multiple locations and programming in multiple languages, all in a centrally managed environment. This is a huge advantage for companies with remote teams or multiple offices.

Shared assets and reuse make individual teams more efficient by eliminating duplicate work, giving organizations the power to deploy cross-company standards. This can really streamline your workflow.

CloudBees CD/RO’s unique analytics provide visibility into one of the best indicators of project success: compiled, tested, working code. This is a huge advantage for companies that want to measure their project success.

CloudBees CD/RO’s analytics database stores all build and test information for real-time and trend reporting, giving your organization the power to collect pinpoint statistics and gain visibility into important productivity metrics such as trends in error rates.

CloudBees CD/RO is a powerful tool that requires a solid foundation to get started. You can build on the knowledge learned in the CloudBees CD/RO: Essentials course.

This course, CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics, is designed for entry-level users who want hands-on experience with the tool. It focuses on basic features and capabilities of CloudBees CD/RO, providing practical exposure to core features.

The course duration with lab exercises is approximately 2-4 hours. Your time may vary depending on your pace.

To get the most out of this course, it's recommended that you have familiarity or experience with software development lifecycles and software release processes. You should also complete the CloudBees CD/RO: Essentials course beforehand.

Here are some of the key topics you'll cover in this course:

After completing this course, you'll be prepared for the CloudBees CD/RO Associate certification exam. If you're an Admin or a DevOps engineer, you can skip this certification and instead take the Associate certification that best fits your role.

CloudBees CD/RO offers two levels of learning paths to help you get started with the product. Level 1 learning paths provide a good understanding of a wide scope of topics through self-paced curriculum, instructional videos, and hands-on lab exercises.

These courses are designed to provide basic knowledge of product usage and are related to an Associate-level certification. You can choose from courses such as Essentials, Basics, Release Orchestration, and Administration, each with varying time commitments.

One of the key features of Level 1 learning paths is the inclusion of hands-on lab exercises in a cloud-based lab environment. This allows you to gain practical experience with the product without having to set up your own environment.

Level 2 learning paths dive deeper into advanced topics, targeted at specific roles such as Administrator or DevOps Engineer. These courses explore specific and advanced features, configurations, use cases, and examples.

Some of the courses in Level 2 learning paths, such as Helm for Very Large Kubernetes Deployments and Analytics, are designed to help you develop advanced skills and earn digital course badges.

Here are the Level 1 and Level 2 learning paths for CloudBees CD/RO:

Note that some courses are marked as available in 2024, so be sure to check the CloudBees CD/RO website for the most up-to-date information.

This self-paced course starts by explaining the terminology and concepts of the CloudBees platform.

The course explores the relationships between the components of the platform, laying the groundwork for further learning.

You'll get to interact with various media throughout the course, without a lab environment, but still gain a solid understanding of the core functionality of CD/RO.

By the end of this learning journey, you'll be familiar with the core functionality of CD/RO.

This course content will also help prepare you for the CloudBees CD/RO Essentials certification exam.

CloudBees CD/RO offers various certification and training programs to help professionals develop their skills. The CloudBees CD/RO DevOps Associate Certification focuses on broad knowledge and practical skills required for active DevOps professionals.

To test their basic usage and implementation knowledge, users can take the CloudBees CD/RO Associate certification. This certification is perfect for those who want to validate their understanding of the platform's core concepts.

DevOps Engineers, Administrators, and Operations Engineers can demonstrate their proficiency in CloudBees CD/RO administrative tasks through the CloudBees CD/RO Admin Associate certification.

Here's what I learned from the course:

You'll be able to list and describe key CloudBees DevOps terms.

CloudBees DevOps is a comprehensive platform that includes Continuous Delivery (CD) and Release Orchestration (RO) among its key components.

CD/RO management-at-scale is a crucial concept to grasp, and it involves managing multiple releases and deployments across different environments.

Here are some key Deployment Automation concepts to keep in mind:

Release Orchestration is a powerful feature that enables you to automate the release process, ensuring that it's consistent and reliable.

The Reporting capabilities of CloudBees DevOps provide valuable insights into your deployment processes, helping you identify areas for improvement.

The CloudBees CD/RO Admin Associate certification is designed for DevOps Engineers, Administrators, and Operations Engineers who want to test their proficiency in CloudBees CD/RO administrative tasks.

This certification is a great next step for those who have completed the CloudBees CD/RO Associate certification or have basic knowledge of CloudBees CD/RO.

To prepare for this certification, you can take the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Administration course, which covers essential administrative tasks such as local group, user, and persona configuration, privilege configuration, resource configuration, workspace configuration, plugin management, and project configuration.

The course is approximately 2 hours long, and you can earn the CloudBees CD/RO Admin Associate certification after completing it.

Here are the skills you'll learn in the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Administration course:

By mastering these skills, you'll be well-prepared to take on more advanced CD/RO platform administration courses and certifications.

CloudBees CD/RO offers several courses to help you master release and deployment automation. You can start with the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Release Orchestration course, which covers building a release pipeline, describing pipeline task types, and running a pipeline on a schedule.

To implement release automation, take the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Release Orchestration Implementation course, which focuses on using advanced features and functionality. You'll learn how to build and run a release using conditions and error handling, configure email notifications, and track change history.

To automate deployments, take the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Deployment Automation course, which covers deployment automation concepts, artifact management, and application and environment modeling. You'll also learn how to create and use application and environment snapshots, credentials, and impersonation, and describe deployment and rollback strategies.

Here's a summary of the courses:

Release Orchestration is a crucial step in the software development lifecycle. It involves automating the release process to ensure smooth deployment of applications.

To build a release pipeline, you need to understand the basics of software release processes. CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics course provides a solid foundation for this. With this knowledge, you can build a release pipeline from scratch using CloudBees CD/RO features and functionality.

Release orchestration involves planning and tracking releases. You can use analytics dashboards to gain insight into releases and identify areas for improvement. For example, CloudBees CD/RO provides analytics dashboards to help you track release performance.

In addition to building and tracking releases, release orchestration also involves troubleshooting and error handling. CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Release Orchestration Implementation course covers advanced features and functionality for implementing release automation, including conditions and error handling.

Here are some key tasks involved in release orchestration:

These tasks require a solid understanding of software release processes and the ability to use CloudBees CD/RO features and functionality.

To connect to your CloudBees CD server, you must create a connection configuration in Jenkins to store your server information.

You can create one or multiple connection configurations depending on the number of servers or environments you're integrating. This is useful if you have multiple projects with different server requirements.

To create and configure your connection, log into your Jenkins instance and navigate to Manage Jenkins > Configure System. This is where you'll find the settings for your CloudBees CD connection.

Under Configurations, find the CloudBees CD section and select Add. This will start the connection configuration process.

You'll need to specify the following information for your configuration: Server URL, Credentials Type, and other settings. Don't worry if you're not sure what these are - you can refer to the CloudBees CD section of your Jenkins instance for more information.

Once you've added your configuration, select Test Connection to ensure your credential is working correctly. If you receive a Success message, your configuration is ready to use.

Here's a quick checklist to help you create and configure your CloudBees CD connection:

CloudBees CD/RO offers a range of courses and certifications for DevOps and automation, including CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Deployment Automation and CloudBees CD/RO Level 2: GitHub Actions.

These courses cover deployment automation concepts and implementation, as well as how to run CloudBees CD/RO operations using GitHub Actions workflows. Students can earn a CloudBees CD/RO DevOps Associate certification after completing these courses.

To get started, it's recommended to have a basic understanding of the software development lifecycle and to have completed the CloudBees CD/RO: Essentials, CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics, and the CloudBees CD/RO Release Orchestration courses and their prerequisites.

Here are some key skills covered in the courses:

The web-based system at the heart of CloudBees CD/RO automation platform is a game-changer for automating and managing the build, test, deployment, and release process.

It's designed to provide a scalable solution to some of the biggest challenges in managing these "back end" software development tasks. Time wasted on script-intensive, manual, home-grown systems is a thing of the past with CloudBees CD/RO.

Multiple, disconnected build and test systems across locations can be a major headache, but CloudBees CD/RO solves this problem by providing a centralized platform.

Slow overall build and release cycles that directly impact businesses are also a thing of the past with CloudBees CD/RO.

Deployment automation is a crucial aspect of DevOps, and it's great to see that CloudBees CD/RO offers a range of courses and tools to help you master it.

CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Deployment Automation is a course that focuses on deployment automation concepts and usage, including hands-on labs to reinforce knowledge.

To get the most out of this course, it's recommended that you have a basic understanding of the software development lifecycle and have completed CloudBees CD/RO: Essentials, CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics, and the CloudBees CD/RO Release Orchestration courses and their prerequisites.

CloudBees CD/RO is a web-based system that automates and manages the build, test, deployment, and release process, providing a scalable solution to some of the biggest challenges of managing software development tasks.

Here are some key benefits of using CloudBees CD/RO for deployment automation:

To get started with deployment automation using CloudBees CD/RO, you can start by completing the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Deployment Automation course and then move on to more advanced courses like CloudBees CD/RO Level 2: GitHub Actions.

By mastering deployment automation with CloudBees CD/RO, you'll be able to improve your team's efficiency, reduce errors, and increase the speed of your software development process.

Helm for Large Kubernetes Deployments is a powerful tool for managing complex deployments. It's particularly useful for very large deployments of CloudBees CD/RO, which can run up to ~100k jobs per day, ~2k pipelines per day, and ~5M steps per day.

To configure Helm chart values for these large deployments, you'll need to have familiarity with Kubernetes and complete courses that cover the basics of CloudBees CD/RO on Kubernetes.

Helm can also be used to configure access to the CloudBees Helm chart repository, which is essential for installing and upgrading CD/RO server and agent on Kubernetes. This process involves using Helm to view CD/RO server and agent versions in the CloudBees Helm chart repository.

Here are the key tasks involved in using Helm for large Kubernetes deployments:

These tasks require a good understanding of Kubernetes and CloudBees CD/RO, as well as the ability to use Helm effectively. With practice and experience, you'll be able to manage complex deployments with ease.

CloudBees CD/RO has a robust analytics feature that allows users to create reports and dashboards to gain insights into their data.

This feature is built on top of the knowledge gained from the CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics and CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Admin courses, which cover the basics of the platform.

To create reports and dashboards, users need to understand the analytics architecture, data model, and terminology, which are covered in the CloudBees CD/RO Level 2: Analytics course.

The course combines informational and instructional curriculum with hands-on exercises to reinforce knowledge learned in the course.

To earn a CloudBees CD/RO Analytics digital badge, learners must pass an assessment at the end of the course.

Here are the key skills and knowledge areas covered in the CloudBees CD/RO Level 2: Analytics course:

To get the most out of the CloudBees CD/RO Level 2: Analytics course, learners should first complete the CloudBees CD/RO: Essentials, CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Basics, and CloudBees CD/RO Level 1: Admin courses.