3.8. Running Jenkins as a Stand-Alone Application

You can run the Jenkins server in one of two ways: either as a stand-alone application, or deployed as a standard web application onto a Java Servlet container or application server such as Tomcat, JBoss, or GlassFish. Both approaches have their pros and cons, so we will look at both here.

Jenkins comes bundled as a WAR file that you can run directly using an embedded servlet container. Jenkins uses the lightweight Winstone servlet engine to allow you to run the server out of the box, without having to configure a web server yourself. This is probably the easiest way to get started, allowing you to be up and running with Jenkins in a matter of minutes. It is also a very flexible option, and provides some extra features unavailable if you deploy Jenkins to a conventional application server. In particular, if you are running Jenkins as a stand-alone server, you will be able to install plugins and upgrades on the fly, and restart Jenkins directly from the administration screens.