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Google Compute Engine Plugin

The Google Compute Engine (GCE) Plugin allows you to use GCE virtual machines (VMs) with Jenkins to execute build tasks. GCE VMs provision quickly, are destroyed by Jenkins when idle, and offer Preemptible VMs that run at a much lower price than regular VMs.

View Google Compute Engine on the plugin site for more information.

Usage

IAM Credentials

  1. Create a service account using the Google Cloud SDK.

     gcloud iam service-accounts create jenkins-gce

  2. Add the instanceAdmin, networkAdmin and serviceAccountUser roles to the service account.

    export PROJECT=$(gcloud info --format='value(config.project)') 
export SA_EMAIL=$(gcloud iam service-accounts list --filter="name:jenkins-gce" \
 --format='value(email)') 
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding --member serviceAccount:$SA_EMAIL \
 --role roles/compute.instanceAdmin $PROJECT
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding --member serviceAccount:$SA_EMAIL \
 --role roles/compute.networkAdmin $PROJECT
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding --member serviceAccount:$SA_EMAIL \
 --role roles/iam.serviceAccountUser $PROJECT

  3. Download a JSON Service Account key for your newly created service account. Take note of where the file was created, you will upload it to Jenkins in a subsequent step.

    gcloud iam service-accounts keys create --iam-account $SA_EMAIL jenkins-gce.json

  4. In Jenkins, click the Credentials button on the left side of the screen. Then click System.

  5. Click Global credentials then Add credentials on the left.

  6. In the Kind dropdown, select Google Service Account from private key.

  7. Enter your project name then select your JSON key that was created in the preceding steps.

  8. Click OK.

Google Compute Engine configuration

Each GCE configuration can point to a different GCP project. Follow the steps below to create one.

  1. Go to Manage Jenkins, then Configure System
  2. At the bottom of the page there will be a button labeled Add a new cloud, click the button then click Google Compute Engine.
  3. Enter a name for your cloud configuration and the Project ID that you will be using to deploy the instances.
  4. In the Service Account Credentials dropdown, select the credentials that you uploaded earlier.

Instance configurations

An instance configuration allows you to map an instance to a set of labels that Jenkins can use to determine when a job requires a particular type of instance. You can create many instance configurations per GCE configuration.

  1. Click on the Add button.
  2. In the Name Prefix field, choose a prefix for the name of the instances that will be deployed.
  3. Set a Description that identifies what this instance configuration will be used for.
  4. Optionally, set a label in the Label field that will allow you to restrict jobs to
    only run on this type of node.
  5. Optionally, select the Custom SSH Private Key option to authenticate with a custom SSH key pair. Choose a SSH private key from the Jenkins Credentials or add a new SSH private key and use that new key. Private keys must follow OpenSSH PEM format.
  6. Select a Region and Zone to define where instances will be launched.
  7. Select the Machine Type for this instance configuration which defines the number of cores and RAM that will be allocated.
  8. Select the Network and Subnetwork that the instance will be deployed into.
  9. For the Boot Disk configuration choose an image that has Java 8 installed and on its default path.

Custom SSH Private Key Use

In order to properly authenticate a new node using a custom SSH private key, the new node must have the public key (corresponding to the selected private key) in the authorized_keys file of the user selected in that instance configuration.

Once complete you should be able to create jobs that restrict their builds to the label you selected. Instances will provision on demand. When no builds have been run for the configured Node Retention Time (default 6 minutes) the instances will be terminated.

Advanced configurations

Instance configurations have many options that were not listed above. A few of the important ones are explained below.

  • Preemptible - instances provisioned by Jenkins will be launched as Preemptible VMs these are up to 80% less expensive than normal VMs but can be terminated at any time. When using this setting, ensure that builds can be retried without impacting your workload.
  • Disk Type and Size - dictates the performance of the filesystem that your agents are running on. Note that in GCE, larger disks get higher IOPS and throughput.
  • Network tags - these tags will be applied to the instances provisioned by Jenkins. These should be set to allow the Jenkins controller to access port 22 on the Jenkins agents. More info on firewall rules in GCE is available here.
  • External IP - dictates whether the instance should receive an external routable IP address. In GCE, you will need to have either an external IP or a NAT gateway setup in order to download anything from the internet.
  • Startup Script - defines a set of commands that should be run before making the instance available for running your jobs. For more info, review the startup script docs.
  • GPUs - attach 1 or more GPUs to the instance. For more info, visit the GCE GPU docs.
  • Service Account E-mail - sets the service account that the instance will be able to access from metadata. For more info, review the service account documentation.

No delay provisioning

By default Jenkins estimates load to avoid over-provisioning of cloud nodes. This plugin will use its own provisioning strategy by default, with this strategy, a new node is created on GCP as soon as NodeProvisioner detects need for more agents. In worst case scenarios, this will results in some extra nodes provisioned on GCP, which will be shortly terminated.

How to configure

Using a system property

If you want to turn off this Strategy globally then you can set a SystemProperty com.google.jenkins.plugins.computeengine.disableNoDelayProvisioning=true

Using the the UI

Follow the steps below to configure it:

  1. Go to Manage Jenkins, then Configure System
  2. At the bottom of the page there will be a Cloud Section
  3. Select the cloud project and look for the No delay provisioning checkbox, and click on to enable it.