Community Training Classes & Labs > F5 Programmability Training Index

Lab 4.1 – File Locations and Jenkins setup¶

We’ve been executing commands locally from Automated scripts. At this point we are now going to take the toolkits and tie them together to form a Pipeline. Pipelines will vary in deployments and even within solutions. Our lab will show you just one way it could be utilized.

Task 1 - Locating the Jenkins files and how they are setup¶

Open Putty and connect to the super-netops-container, user credentials are snops and default
During the installation of the super-netops-container there were several github repositories cloned, all of which are mapped to the /home/snops/ directory.

Execute: cd ~/f5-automation-labs/jenkins to access our folder containing the Jenkins Pipeline Files

The Jenkins files are located alongside the f5-newman-wrapper files we’ve used in the previous labs (setup this way was for ease of learning). You may place tools in different structures in your environment.

File Locations:

|- /f5-automation-labs
   |- /jenkins
   |  |  /f5-newman-build
   |  |      Jenkinsfile1-2
   |  |      Jenkinsfile5
   |  |  /f5-newman-operation
   |  |      Jenkinsfile3
   |  |      Jenkinsfile4

Lets review the first Jenkins file, from the correct structure execute cat Jenkinsfile1-2

File output:

node {
   stage('Testing') {
      //Run the tests
      //sh "python –m /home/snops/f5-automation-labs/jenkins/f5-newman-build/f5-newman-build-1"
      //sh "python –m /home/snops/f5-automation-labs/jenkins/f5-newman-build/f5-newman-build-2"
   }
   stage('Frameword-Deployment') {
       //Run SNOPS Container Newman Package Virtual and Pool
      sh "f5-newman-wrapper /home/snops/f5-automation-labs/jenkins/f5-newman-build/f5-newman-build-1"
      //chatops slack message that run has completed
      slackSend(
         channel: '#jenkins_builds',
         color: 'good',
         message: 'Super-NetOps Engineer is about to deploy an F5 Service Framework, Approval Needed!',
         teamDomain: 'f5agilitydevops',
         token: 'vLMQmBq2tiyiCcZoNlbmAi0Z'
         )
   }
   stage('Approval') {
      //Gate the process and require approval
      input 'Proceed?'
      //chatops slack message that run has completed
      slackSend(
          channel: '#jenkins_builds',
          color: 'good',
          message: 'Super-NetOps Engineer just approved a new F5 Service Framework, thats some serious Continuous Delivery!',
          teamDomain: 'f5agilitydevops',
          token: 'vLMQmBq2tiyiCcZoNlbmAi0Z'
          )
   }
   stage('Add-Sevice-Node') {
       //Run SNOPS Container Newman Package add Node to Pool
      sh "f5-newman-wrapper /home/snops/f5-automation-labs/jenkins/f5-newman-build/f5-newman-build-2"
      //chatops slack message that run has completed
      slackSend(
         channel: '#jenkins_builds',
         color: 'good',
         message: 'Super-NetOps Engineer just added a Node to a Service, Production is Online!',
         teamDomain: 'f5agilitydevops',
         token: 'vLMQmBq2tiyiCcZoNlbmAi0Z'
         )
   }
}

This is a Jenkins Pipeline file, which we will be inputing into a Pipeline deployment via our Jenkins Toolkit.
The file should be human readable even without Jenkins experience, a stage can be thought of as a step in the Pipeline (or a work-center in manufacturing terms); right after the stage is its name, followed by some commands. Since the super-netops-container is running this Jenkins installation locally, we can use local mappings to file structure.
In more common deployments the Jenkins file would be stored in a SCM (like Github) and called during an Event (Build/Pull Request) or a Polling Timer, or even some other kind of scripting launch.
Testing in Pipeline before executing code with tools like linter or python scripts can make sure formatting is valid, reducing errors from happening during builds.

Our installation also has some Slack calls. Which we will setup next.

Task 2 - Accessing Jenkins and Installing the Slack-Notifier Plug-in¶

Slack is a ChatOps tool, think of Skype, Messenger or IIRC! Except Slack also has the ability to take in bots. slackbots are used to interact with services, they might query something for you when asked, or give you information when they notice something. In our case our Jenkins Pipeline file will use Slack to notify all of us when an action happens, collaborative teamwork.

Access Jenkins via Chrome, if you didn’t set a bookmark to the mapped port you can access the service via http://10.1.1.8:10000, the user credentials are admin\default.
Once you are logged into Jenkins it should look like below
Click on Manage Jenkins
On the Manage Jenkins tab Select Available then filter on slack, once the filter is complete choose Slack Notification Plugin and execute Install without Restart
Once the Slack Notification Plugin has changed to Success, tick the radio button for Restart Jenkins when installation is complete and no jobs are running
Slack can take a few minutes to install in the background (give it 30 seconds), once the Restarting Jenkins globe is grey and the status is Running go back to Jenkins Home
Executing a restart of Jenkins your session will be ended and you will need to log back into the system