CloudBees Flow® v9.2 FR is now available

Original Creation Date: 2019-11-12 18:29:00 UTC

Summary

We are pleased to announce the general availability of the CloudBees Flow 9.2 FR. This release is of the “Feature Release” type. For more information about types of releases, please go to CloudBees Flow Release Strategy.  

This release modernizes how Flow is installed with deployment to Kubernetes, and improves visibility, management and administration of release automation with enhancements across the product. 

Some of the highlights are: 

Simplify server administration: Deploy Flow to Kubernetes 

CloudBees Flow can now be installed in containers on Kubernetes.   Use Helm charts to configure and deploy all components of the Flow architecture in Kubernetes, greatly simplifying configuration and installation of Flow.   Flow server clusters can easily be scaled to meet enterprise workloads, making set up of clustered environments painless. Leverage your Kubernetes clusters and simplify server management and upgrades with Flow deployments in containers.  This capability is available as a technical preview in 9.2, see the installation guide for instructions to get started.

Easily manage your automation as code in DSL with new import and export enhancements

Any object in CloudBees Flow can be authored and stored in the Groovy based DSL.  DSL provides greater control and versioning of your pipelines, allowing management of ARO automation as code.  In 9.2, we introduce enhancements to the DSL import and export functions, making it even easier to treat your pipelines as a product and manage them as code:

• Two new Self Service Catalog items to import and export your DSL with the click of a button
• Export Flow objects in multiple files in a directory structure that is easy to understand, edit and maintain, eliminating any need to review and manually edit the DSL.
• A new overwrite mode for importing DSL replaces any existing fields on import, ensuring that the DSL code is the true representation of the automation.
• New options for controlling which fields are exported to DSL, like suppressing null values and default fields and only exporting top level objects, for simpler and more manageable code.

Enterprise release management and visibility at scale 

Enterprise releases can be complex with many moving parts and dependencies.  In many cases enterprise releases are comprised of numerous sub-releases and application pipelines, where each application team determines when the application can join the release.  In 9.2, we introduce new features for managing and monitoring enterprise releases at scale:

• The new Portfolio List builds on the portfolio view, with a scalable list view showing real time visibility into the stage level status of each pipeline and its relationships in the release hierarchy.  The new list format shows more pipelines in one view, scaling to meet the size of enterprise releases. Advanced search options allow you to quickly filter the view to focus on relevant pipelines.
• New options in releases now enable application pipelines to be attached to a running release.  Application owners can determine whether to attach their pipeline to the release when they see fit.  Attached pipelines are added in the portfolio view, providing centralized visibility across the entire release train.  In case an issue with the application arises and it can’t be released, the pipeline can be detached from that release. This provides flexibility to adjust the release payload even after the release has begun.
• New options to customize the label for releases and pipelines in the Portfolio views, making the view easy to understand at a glance.

Maintain system size with data retention rules for purging

Expanding on data archiving introduced in 9.1, users can now define data retention rules with multiple strategies for maintaining data in the Cloudbees Flow system.  The new purge option for data management will allow administrators to remove old runtime objects, like pipelines, deployments and jobs, from the database, as well as associated workspace files from the filesystem.  This capability empowers administrators to easily manage and maintain system size and performance.

Get started with your custom dashboards with the DevOps Insight User Guide

DevOps Insight usage and administration information is now available in its own volume.  This guide has a wealth of new content for understanding and extending the data model, creating custom dashboards and reports, server configuration and more.  Use the guide for a deep understanding of DevOps Insight and to get started creating your own custom dashboards.

Release Command Center: Copy configurations for quick setup

Continuing work in the last two releases that improved setup of the Release Command Center, now when configuring the dashboard configurations, these can be copied from existing dashboards.  Copying configuration details simplifies setting up a new release by leveraging previous data.

Administration pages migration for a unified experience

Various administration pages have been migrated from the Platform UI to Flow’s Deploy UI, with a new configurations page for managing system configurations.  This provides central accessibility to administration pages with a consistent look and feel. 

Plugins

The Flow Plugin Development Framework (FlowPDF) introduced in 9.1 simplifies creation of plugins in a few simple steps, empowering users to extend CloudBees Flow to work with a variety of tool chains.  The guide is available here . We continue to improve FlowPDF in 9.2 with new enhancements:

• Generate code for collecting reporting data from third party tools.  This enables users to extend DevOps Insight and build dashboards with data from any tool.
• Boilerplate code generation that simplifies creation of REST based plugins, along with support for different authentication mechanisms.
• New libraries for error and exception handling.
• A descriptive plugin developer guide that has step by step tutorials for building plugins along with sample code to get started.

We continuously develop and improve plugins used across DevOps processes:

• Introducing two new plugins, EC-Bamboo and EC-OctopusDeploy, which have been built using FlowPDF.
• Enhancements to EC-Jenkins, EC-EC2, EC-ServiceNow, EC-Git, EC-WebSphere, and more.

Download Instructions

Download Cloudbees Flow 9.2 FR from the CloudBees Sharefile site.

• Login using your personalized account to the CloudBees Sharefile at https://cloudbees.sharefile.com 
• Navigate to: /products/flow/release_9.2/9.2.0.139827 or click here:  9.2.0.139827
• Server and agent installers are located in the directory corresponding to the operating system (for example, windows)
• Release notes and product documentation are available online: CloudBees Flow Documentation

Supported Configurations

See the “System Requirements and Supported Platforms” section in the CloudBees Flow Installation Guide for a complete list of supported platforms and configurations.

Upgrade

Upgrades to CloudBees Flow 9.2 FR are supported from ElectricFlow 5.x, 6.x, 7.x  8.x, 9.1 and 9.0.x versions. For complete upgrade requirements and instructions, please see the CloudBees Flow Installation Guide

Support

Contact Customer Support with questions related to this release at flow-support@cloudbees.com.