Stop Fighting Your CI/CD Tools - Make Them Work Together

Here's the thing nobody tells you: you never plan to have Jenkins, GitHub Actions, and GitLab CI all running in your company. It just fucking happens.

Maybe you acquired a startup that lived on GitHub Actions. Maybe your compliance team mandated GitLab for security scanning after that one pen test found seventeen critical CVEs. Maybe Jenkins has been running your mainframe deployments since 2015 and nobody wants to touch it because it works and Bob, who set it up, retired last year (taking all the tribal knowledge with him).

Now you're stuck coordinating deployments across three different platforms, each with their own YAML syntax from hell, and every release feels like a game of CI/CD Russian roulette.

The Real Multi-Platform Nightmare

Ever tried to coordinate a deployment that needs Jenkins to build the JAR, GitHub Actions to run the frontend tests, and GitLab to scan for vulnerabilities before anything goes to prod? It's like herding cats while they're on fire.

Here's what actually happens in most companies:

• Jenkins is running legacy builds that nobody understands but everyone's afraid to migrate
• GitHub Actions works great until you need custom runners, then prepare for Error: Unable to create ephemeral runner registration token at 2AM
• GitLab CI has decent security scanning, but the runners randomly disappear on weekends

The worst part? Each platform thinks it's the center of the universe. Jenkins doesn't give a shit about your GitHub Actions workflow status. GitHub Actions has no idea GitLab is scanning the same codebase. GitLab's security gates can block a deployment that Jenkins already approved.

What Nobody Tells You About \"Orchestration\"

All those architecture diagrams with neat arrows and event buses? That's not how this works in reality.

You'll spend the first month setting up webhooks that randomly fail. The second month debugging why EventBridge costs more than your AWS bill. The third month explaining to management why the "simple integration" is taking six months and why you need to hire two more platform engineers.

Real timeline expectations: This isn't a weekend project. Budget 3-6 months and expect everything to break twice. Maybe three times if you're using custom Jenkins plugins and Oracle databases.

What Actually Works (From Someone Who's Done This)

EventBridge is dead simple and AWS handles the scaling. Each CI platform fires events when builds complete. Lambda functions coordinate the next steps. Works great until someone deploys a chatty webhook and your Lambda bill explodes.

Cost reality: Budget $500-2000/month depending on your build volume. Jenkins webhook spam will surprise you - we hit 250k events in one day from a misconfigured build trigger. Don't try to optimize EventBridge costs on day one - I wasted 2 weeks on this while production burns.

Option 1: EventBridge + Lambda (If You're on AWS)

EventBridge is dead simple and AWS handles the scaling. Each CI platform fires events when builds complete. Lambda functions coordinate the next steps. Works great until someone deploys a chatty webhook and your Lambda bill explodes.

Cost reality: Budget $500-2000/month depending on your build volume. Jenkins webhook spam will surprise you - we hit 250k events in one day from a misconfigured build trigger. Don't try to optimize EventBridge costs on day one - I wasted 2 weeks on this while production burns.

Option 2: Simple Database Coordination

Sometimes the dumbest solution is the best. A shared Postgres table tracking deployment state across platforms. Not fancy, but it works when EventBridge is down.

Gotcha: Race conditions are real. Use proper database locks or you'll deploy half-finished builds to production. Ask me how I know.

Option 3: Accept the Chaos

Run them separately. Use monitoring to catch when things break. Deploy to different environments and coordinate manually for critical releases.

Unpopular opinion: This might be better than spending six months building orchestration that breaks every time someone updates a Jenkins plugin.

The Three Platforms, Honestly Assessed

Jenkins: Infinitely customizable, which means infinitely broken. Great for complex enterprise workflows. Terrible for everything else. The UI looks like it's from 2005 because it is.

GitHub Actions: Amazing developer experience until you need anything beyond basic CI. Custom runners are expensive and fragile. Matrix builds randomly fail for no reason.

GitLab CI: Security scanning works great. Everything else is hit or miss. Runners have a habit of disappearing during deployments. The YAML debugging experience makes you want to quit programming.

Deployment Coordination That Won't Make You Cry

1. Pick a deployment trigger source - Usually GitLab since security scanning runs last
2. Use deployment slots - Staging, canary, production. Each platform owns specific slots
3. Shared artifact storage - S3 or Artifactory. Stop rebuilding the same JAR three times
4. Circuit breakers - When Jenkins fails (it will), GitHub Actions can still deploy

The secret: Don't try to make them work together perfectly. Make them fail gracefully and recover quickly.

This setup took us 4 months, not the 2 weeks management promised. Budget at least $50k in AWS costs while you figure out the autoscaling. Plan for your first deployment to fail spectacularly.

But when it works, you can ship code without sacrificing your security team's requirements or migrating 200 Jenkins jobs that somehow still run your entire business.

Look, I'm not going to sugarcoat this: integrating three different CI/CD platforms is a pain in the ass. But I've done it twice, and here's what actually works instead of what the consultants tell you.

Start Simple: Webhooks and Shared Storage

Forget the fancy event-driven architectures for now. Start with webhooks because they're simple and when they break, you can see exactly what's wrong.

The basic flow that won't make you cry:

1. GitHub Actions builds and pushes to shared S3 bucket
2. GitHub webhook triggers Jenkins with the S3 path
3. Jenkins processes, deploys to staging, triggers GitLab webhook
4. GitLab scans staging environment, promotes to prod on success

## In GitHub Actions - simple trigger that actually works
curl -X POST \"https://jenkins.company.com/job/deploy/buildWithParameters\" \
  --user \"$JENKINS_USER:$JENKINS_TOKEN\" \
  --data \"artifact_path=s3://builds/${GITHUB_SHA}.tar.gz&commit=${GITHUB_SHA}\"

Why this works: Each platform does what it's good at. GitHub builds fast, Jenkins handles enterprise bullshit, GitLab does security.

Shared Artifact Storage (The Glue That Binds)

Use S3 or whatever cloud storage you have. All three platforms can read/write to it. Boom, instant artifact sharing.

Real pattern that doesn't break:

• builds/${repo}/${commit_sha}/app.jar - Jenkins artifacts
• tests/${repo}/${commit_sha}/results.xml - GitHub Actions test results
• scans/${repo}/${commit_sha}/security.json - GitLab security reports

Pro tip: Use lifecycle policies to delete old builds after 30 days or your storage bill will murder your budget. The "simple" webhook integration broke our staging environment twice.

State Coordination (Or: How to Know What's Actually Happening)

DynamoDB table with build status. Simple schema:

{
  \"build_id\": \"repo-name-commit-sha\",
  \"github_status\": \"COMPLETED\",
  \"jenkins_status\": \"RUNNING\",
  \"gitlab_status\": \"PENDING\",
  \"timestamp\": \"2025-09-17T10:30:00Z\"
}

Each platform updates its status. Other platforms poll before starting. Not fancy, but it works when EventBridge costs you $2000 because Jenkins spam-fired 50,000 webhooks.

What Breaks (And How to Fix It)

GitHub Actions randomly timing out?

• Default timeout is 6 hours but runners die after 4
• Add timeout-minutes: 360 to your workflow jobs
• Self-hosted runners crash more but give you control

Jenkins webhook authentication failing?

• Jenkins changed auth in version 2.400+
• Use API tokens, not passwords
• Test with curl first: curl -u user:token jenkins-url/job/test/build

GitLab runners disappearing on weekends?

• Their managed runners have resource limits and timeout jobs after 3 hours with ERROR: Job failed: execution took longer than 3h0m0s seconds
• Set up your own runner with `gitlab-runner register` - took me 4 attempts to get the registration token right
• Budget $200/month for a decent EC2 instance (t3.large minimum or your builds will crawl)

Monitoring That Actually Helps

Forget distributed tracing initially. Start with basic health checks:

## Simple monitor script that runs every 5 minutes
#!/bin/bash
curl -f https://api.github.com/status || echo \"GitHub down\"
curl -f \"https://your-jenkins.company.com/api/json\" || echo \"Jenkins down\"
curl -f \"https://gitlab.example.com/api/v4/version\" || echo \"GitLab down\"

When something breaks at 3am, you want to know which platform is fucked, not spend 30 minutes troubleshooting telemetry.

Security That Won't Get You Fired

Secrets management: AWS Systems Manager Parameter Store. Cheaper than Secrets Manager for most use cases. Each platform can read parameters with IAM roles.

Network security: Don't overthink it. Use HTTPS everywhere, restrict source IPs where possible. VPC peering if you're paranoid.

The one rule: Never put secrets in Git. Ever. Not even "temporary" ones. Set up pre-commit hooks that reject commits with secrets.

Deployment Strategy (The Part That Actually Matters)

1. Dev builds: GitHub Actions only. Fast feedback loop.
2. Staging: GitHub → Jenkins → GitLab pipeline. Full security scanning.
3. Production: GitLab promotes after manual approval.

Blue/green deployments: Each platform deploys to different slots. Swap when all pass.

Rollback strategy: Keep the last 3 deployments ready to switch back. Lambda function that swaps load balancer targets takes 30 seconds vs 20 minutes to redeploy.

Timeline Reality Check

• Week 1-2: Basic webhook integration between any two platforms
• Week 3-4: Add the third platform, shared storage
• Week 5-8: State coordination, monitoring, debugging why everything breaks on Fridays
• Month 2-3: Production deployment, security hardening, explaining to security why you need cross-platform API access
• Month 4-6: Optimizations, cost reduction when AWS bill hits $5k/month

You'll need 2-3 senior engineers for 6 months minimum. Anyone telling you this is a "2-week sprint" has never actually built one.

The secret sauce: Don't try to make it perfect. Make it work, then make it reliable, then make it fast. In that order.