Oracle Visual Builder Studio added a key new capability to its CI/CD service this weekend – you can now add your own software to a build executor. This enables automation of CI/CD for a much wider set of artifacts. In addition it allows you to use a single VM to run multiple builds with different technology sets.
Up until now CI/CD pipelines executed on virtual machines running in Oracle Cloud Compute with software that you configured on them from a selection of software components we offered. With the new docker based architecture, organizations have more flexibility in configuring the operating system and software available on the build executor. While you can still leverage the software templates provided by Visual Builder Studio, you can also have the build executor pick up docker images from docker repositories and using those to run your CI/CD. These docker images can contain any software package you require for your CI/CD processes.
In the new Docker based architecture VB Studio leverages a single management VM to manage one or more VMs that will host the docker executors. Each VM can host multiple docker executors allowing you to reduce the overall number of VMs needed to run different software stacks. The docker management VM assign build jobs to the right docker based VMs in an optimal way. You have full control on the number of VMs used, their shape, and number of executors per VM. Read more about this in the documentation overview section.
Another benefit of this new architecture is faster setup speed for your build executors. Since the software for the docker image only needs to be installed once, and since a single VM can run multiple types of executors, the docker based executors can start faster compared to having to install and start multiple VMs.
Here is a quick demo showing the full process of setting up a new Docker based build executor – in this example adding the ability to CI/CD Rust based apps in VB Studio:
If you are currently using the compute VM architecture and you want to switch to using the docker based architecture – a one-click migration process can handle the migration for you. It will create parallel docker executors that match the ones you used so far on the VM approach with the same software template so your existing build jobs can continue to work seamlessly.