7 ms·

Jenkins is "heavyweight" but Postgres isn't?

by freddie_mercury 8y ago

guywhocodes 8y ago
In what way is it not? I'm really curious actually
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
kalleboo 8y ago
Well if Postgres is already in your stack, it's no extra maintenance.
sanderjd 8y ago
When I was running both at the same time about five years ago, yeah, I personally found Jenkins to be more operationally expensive than a small postgresql instance. It required more memory, more CPU, and more time to set up and keep running as desired. Maybe things have improved or maybe it's just a YMMV thing, but yeah, I would have said the same thing as your parent without thinking twice. Edit to add: oh yeah, I just read another comment that reminded me that it also ate up lots of disk space as well.
thatjsguy 8y ago
As someone who has administrated both, I’d rather manage 10 Postgres instances than one Jenkins box. No question. Edit: I should expound. Jenkins seems like it has a lot of clunky moving parts. It all works, and I’d rather use it than anything else, but it’s kind of like IKEA furniture: you use it because you have to, not necessarily because you want to. It’s also incredibly difficult to automate. I can configure Postgres with a config file or two and easily use Ansible to get the exact same instance every time. Jenkins has to be dragged into Automation Alley kicking and screaming. I partially blame this on the fact that Jenkins has nontrivial amounts of configuration that’s done via GUI. I approach a long-running Jenkins instance with the same fear and dread I approach a Windows box that hasn’t been restarted in six months. I.e. the box is now a snowflake and trying to make it reproducible and automated is going to be a bad time. I could go on, but as a devops critter, Postgres wins every time.
- peterwwillis 8y ago
  Jenkins is probably 100 times easier to deploy, configure, operate, and scale than Postgres+whatever, which is a horrifying statement, but still true. If what you have to do is schedule and run arbitrary jobs on any kind of machine, it's no contest. They aren't even related. Postgres is a relational database, and Jenkins is a single Java process that stores flat files on local disk, connects to remote nodes with SSH, and has a thousand plugins. It's like comparing a missile with an airplane. One gets where it needs to go faster and more efficiently, and the other one transports people.
  - setquk 8y ago
    Jenkins is one of those things that looks good until you trip over the numerous bugs in it. Such as the slightly terribly leaky implementation that hoses itself once a week, the severely million inodes it decides to gobble up which makes backups a chore etc. Sure it works but from an admin perspective it’s horrid.
    - peterwwillis 8y ago
      Is this really more horrid than having to hire a DBA to maintain, operate and upgrade the cron replacement? I can write a script to identify and remediate bugs in apps. I can't so easily write a script to diagnose badly used database apps and get the developers to rewrite their queries to not blow up the database servers. It's much easier to set up, lock down, and maintain Jenkins than Postgres+whatever, imo. But I guess everything can go to hell depending on how it's used.
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >Is this really more horrid than having to hire a DBA to maintain, operate and upgrade the cron replacement? Only you don't. I'm not sure why you seem afraid of Postgres, but millions of people use it, across tons of companies, and even for personal projects, and it's trivial to setup and run. Oh, and those lots of plugins and stuff you mention? You don't have to use them if you don't need them. They don't even enter the picture at all.

Jenkins is "heavyweight" but Postgres isn't?

guywhocodes 8y ago

In what way is it not? I'm really curious actually

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

kalleboo 8y ago

Well if Postgres is already in your stack, it's no extra maintenance.

sanderjd 8y ago

When I was running both at the same time about five years ago, yeah, I personally found Jenkins to be more operationally expensive than a small postgresql instance. It required more memory, more CPU, and more time to set up and keep running as desired. Maybe things have improved or maybe it's just a YMMV thing, but yeah, I would have said the same thing as your parent without thinking twice. Edit to add: oh yeah, I just read another comment that reminded me that it also ate up lots of disk space as well.

thatjsguy 8y ago

As someone who has administrated both, I’d rather manage 10 Postgres instances than one Jenkins box. No question. Edit: I should expound. Jenkins seems like it has a lot of clunky moving parts. It all works, and I’d rather use it than anything else, but it’s kind of like IKEA furniture: you use it because you have to, not necessarily because you want to. It’s also incredibly difficult to automate. I can configure Postgres with a config file or two and easily use Ansible to get the exact same instance every time. Jenkins has to be dragged into Automation Alley kicking and screaming. I partially blame this on the fact that Jenkins has nontrivial amounts of configuration that’s done via GUI. I approach a long-running Jenkins instance with the same fear and dread I approach a Windows box that hasn’t been restarted in six months. I.e. the box is now a snowflake and trying to make it reproducible and automated is going to be a bad time. I could go on, but as a devops critter, Postgres wins every time.

peterwwillis 8y ago
Jenkins is probably 100 times easier to deploy, configure, operate, and scale than Postgres+whatever, which is a horrifying statement, but still true. If what you have to do is schedule and run arbitrary jobs on any kind of machine, it's no contest. They aren't even related. Postgres is a relational database, and Jenkins is a single Java process that stores flat files on local disk, connects to remote nodes with SSH, and has a thousand plugins. It's like comparing a missile with an airplane. One gets where it needs to go faster and more efficiently, and the other one transports people.
- setquk 8y ago
  Jenkins is one of those things that looks good until you trip over the numerous bugs in it. Such as the slightly terribly leaky implementation that hoses itself once a week, the severely million inodes it decides to gobble up which makes backups a chore etc. Sure it works but from an admin perspective it’s horrid.
  - peterwwillis 8y ago
    Is this really more horrid than having to hire a DBA to maintain, operate and upgrade the cron replacement? I can write a script to identify and remediate bugs in apps. I can't so easily write a script to diagnose badly used database apps and get the developers to rewrite their queries to not blow up the database servers. It's much easier to set up, lock down, and maintain Jenkins than Postgres+whatever, imo. But I guess everything can go to hell depending on how it's used.
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >Is this really more horrid than having to hire a DBA to maintain, operate and upgrade the cron replacement? Only you don't. I'm not sure why you seem afraid of Postgres, but millions of people use it, across tons of companies, and even for personal projects, and it's trivial to setup and run. Oh, and those lots of plugins and stuff you mention? You don't have to use them if you don't need them. They don't even enter the picture at all.