Bamboo Cloud end of life?
Asked by Dave Todaro:

*This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: [Bamboo Cloud EOL](https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=827125716)*

I have to admit, I'm dumbfounded. I don't understand why a company would discontinue a cloud application in favor of an on-premise app? It makes no sense.

However, I'm working to get my arms around what this means. Bamboo Cloud is at the heart of our contract software engineering practice; there's no way we can deliver the level of quality to our clients without a cloud-hosted build server. (We have no physical infrastructure; everything is cloud-hosted).

I reviewed the information about Bitbucket Pipelines and I'm confused as to how this will be a replacement for Bamboo Cloud. It doesn't seem clear how I can create a continuous integration server to build our Microsoft .NET web applications and .NET-based Xamarin applications.

There are details about continuous delivery but it's unclear how continuous integration will work. When I click "Features" on the Pipelines page I'm brought to the Bitbucket features page.

We have close to three years of investment into Bamboo Cloud and it forms the foundation of our many client projects. Our projects can't operate without a cloud-hosted build infrastructure.

Can someone clarify how I get from where we are today (a world-class cloud-hosted build infrastructure at a very low cost without any physical infrastructure) to an equivalent?

This is very disappointing.

Thanks in advance for any help.

Dave


Answers:
author: Sten Pittet
body: Hi Dave,

Discontinuing Bamboo Cloud was a tough decision to make because we have customers that are relying on it everyday as part of their workflows. However, as we were looking into our ability to improve it and make it evolve to satisfy the new needs of Cloud teams we realised that we would not be able to deliver the experience we wanted in the future.

Bitbucket Pipelines is in early stages and has gaps compared to Bamboo Cloud but we can move faster to fill those. We have received great feedback so far from teams that are saving time thanks to the direct integration and the agents being managed by us. Configuration as code also helps to keep their pipelines versioned with the repository and simplify the management of pipelines. Regarding .NET we're seeing [Microsoft and Docker working together](https://hub.docker.com/u/microsoft/) to provide images on the DockerHub and we already have customers that are providing examples of [YML configuration for .NET Core](https://bitbucket.org/liammoat/pipelines-dotnet-demo) applications. We will also keep on working with partners to provide solutions for environments that are not yet supported by Docker.

It was not an easy decision to make to discontinue Bamboo Cloud but it believe that it is the right one to be able to provide a great Continuous Delivery solution in the Cloud that can help all teams to ship better software at greater speed.

I hope that this helps understand our decision, please let me know if you have any other question.

Best regards,

Sten Pittet

Product Manager

comments: author: Dave Todaro
body: Thank you, Sten.

As long as we can figure out how we'll support our ASP.NET 4.5 and .NET portable class library (the heart of our Xamarin apps) continuous integration builds in the cloud after January 2017, that will make me a happy man. We have hundreds of thousands of dollars invested in the projects that have Bamboo at their core.

I'm hoping that there will be a solution for these two scenarios; today there doesn't appear to be Docker support for them.

Thanks,

Dave


author: Dave Todaro
body: Hi, @Sten Pittet. It's been about a month and I wanted to check in to see if there are any developments with Pipelines support for Microsoft .NET 4.x?

Although .NET Core is attractive it's a bit too "shiny and new" to recommend to our clients just yet. I realize we have a bit of time until our current Bamboo-focused strategy needs to change, but I want to make sure I'm out ahead of this as much as possible.

Any updated information would be greatly appreciated!

Dave


author: Scott Brown
body: So why not keep Bamboo Cloud running until Bitbucket Pipelines is actually ready?


author: Dave Todaro
body: That's a great question.

@Sten Pittet, any thoughts on giving us some more time until Bitbucket Pipelines can support our .NET projects?

Dave


author: Sten Pittet
body: Hi @Dave Todaro,

There are constraints unrelated to Bitbucket Pipelines on the Bamboo platform that prevent us from pushing the EOL of Bamboo Cloud any further. While we would have liked to be able to link these two services together it is unfortunately really hard for us to do so.

On one hand we recognised that there was a limit to the level of service that we could offer our customers with Bamboo Cloud, and the best thing for us was to be honest by ending the service. Our recommendation with the EOL is to migrate to Bamboo Server as it offers the same features and we have Experts partners that can help with the hosting.

On the other hand we know that CI/CD is a critical capability for Software Teams and this is why we launched Bitbucket Pipelines as a better fit on the Cloud. But it's a brand new service for Bitbucket Cloud and we cannot tie Bamboo Cloud EOL to Bitbucket Pipelines GA release. We're doing our best to bring Pipelines to maturity so that all our customers can benefit from it but due to the change in architecture and the use of Docker some things such as Windows support are harder for us to plan.

I hope that this feedback helps, please let me know if you have any other questions.

Regards,

Sten


author: Dave Todaro
body: Thank you @Sten Pittet.


author: Rob Horan
body: > *This question is in reference to Atlassian Documentation: [Bamboo Cloud EOL](https://confluence.atlassian.com/pages/viewpage.action?pageId=827125716)*

Unfortunately, it seems this page no longer exists.

comments: author: Nic Brough -Adaptavist-
body: It was 7 years ago...


author: Ben Hubbard
body: I too am in the same spot. I moved away from digital ocean to use AWS and bamboo cloud not long ago and have EXTREMELY happy! It took some setup but our team has loved the change. I was 100% shell shocked to get the email today about the change.

I wish the tech community would just support software instead of abandon it because the next hottest thing is around the corner. I face the same problem with angular 2.0 coming quickly. Things are moving too fast for small companies to keep up, especially with only a years lifecycle before some tool gets another great idea.

I think I'm going to find something else. I mean, these days, you guys are only hot for a moment and then some kid has you beat.

I'm so disappointment!

Ben

comments: author: Dave Todaro
body: Ben, I'd appreciate any information about what tool you decide on.

I reviewed Bitbucket Pipelines but it appears to be based on Docker, which is very open source-focused and the polar opposite of where we live (in the ASP.NET MVC, WebAPI, and .NET portable class library-based Xamarin world.)

I'm going to review the Bamboo Server migration documentation, thinking of deploying it via an Azure virtual machine, all the while wondering "why are we taking such a big step backward?"

I guess there is a benefit to getting off of our current hybrid Azure (which hosts all of our client projects) and Amazon AWS (which we **only** use for the Bamboo elastic build server image.)

Still perplexed,

Dave


author: Bill Langton
body: We're .NET too. I don't see Pipelines as an option anytime soon and it would require a total rethink of our build and deploy process which was built around Bamboo Cloud and deploys to multiple servers at Amazon and Rackspace.

Looking at Bamboo Server on an EC2 instance, but I have yet to find any recommended hardware specs from Atlassian. Obviously, this depends on a number of variables, but it would be nice to know if a T2.Large (2 vCPU, 8GB) EC2 instance will work for a small team, without a remote agent.

The FAQ and migration docs are pretty weak. After reading the high level docs, I really have no idea what amount of effort will be required to complete a move from Cloud to Server.

Since Atlassian is forcing the issue, we are going to look at Jenkins as a replacement. Jenkins has Free and Enterprise versions. Cloudbees seems to be the provider of choice for Enterprise.


author: Dave Todaro
body: Thanks, @Bill Langton.

I have heard good things about Jenkins.

Do you know of any cloud-hosted build systems that will support .NET? Our strategy is utilizing SaaS applications, followed by Platform as a Service (i.e. Azure app services) with a distant third being Infrastructure as a Service (i.e. Azure virtual machines).

I don't want us spending our time dealing with OS updates on a virtual server we manage ourselves if I can help it.


author: Bill Langton
body: Appveyor.com is the only other cloud-hosted CI system that I've found that supports Windows/.NET. Haven't spent much time looking at it yet.

There are companies that will host Bamboo for you. I spoke with Contegix.

TeamCity from JetBrains looks interesting, but is self hosted. A cheaper alternative to enterprise version of Jenkins, and slightly cheaper than Bamboo if you use a remote agent.


author: Dave Todaro
body: Thanks for the information!


author: Dave Todaro
body: Agreed, the strategy is very confusing. I **hope** I don't get into a situation where we have to reconsider our across-the-board investment in the Atlassian Cloud suite. It not only runs our business; we also recommend it and oftentimes deploy it to our Agile coaching clients.

I have to say, I'm also somewhat surprised it's been two days and I haven't received a response from Atlassian.


author: Josh B
body: Agree completely and we are in the exact same boat. Between this announcement and the various cloud plug-ins being removed from JIRA Cloud with no functional replacement, Atlassian continues to go backwards. And continues to have an odd preference of deployed software vs cloud. These changes make me strong reconsider if the "Atlassian" stack is the right play for our software development process.

I'm very interested in what others find as alternative vendors that offer a similar product to what Bamboo is was.


Tags: cloud

end-of-life