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StackTrack Blog
Tas Skoudros
Editorial Team
The CRA is not a legal side quest. It is a product discipline requirement that forces teams to prove they can build, support, and secure digital products over their full lifecycle.
Guard Rails for Agentic DevOps in 2026
“Guard rails” is absolutely the buzzword for 2026 — and for once, it’s earned.
AWS vs Azure vs GCP for DevOps in 2026 (AI Ready)
Choosing a cloud provider shouldn’t feel like comparing catalogues.
How to Use Spot Instances Without Downtime
Most people talk about spot instances like they’re a clever hack: the same cloud compute, but cheaper, if you’re willing to tolerate a bit of risk.
Using AI for DevOps Automation: GitHub Actions, Jenkins, Kubernetes, Helm, Terraform
Most “DevOps engineering” is structured translation work. The art of good DevOps is creating reliable workflows.
Continuous Integration: A Complete Guide to Testing, Tools & Team Process
Want a CI pipeline your developers actually trust (and leadership can rely on for predictable delivery)? Keep reading—we’ll cover the pillars of CI, the common tool choices, and a practical rollout plan.
Understanding GitHub Actions Runner Costs in 2026 (and why your bill moved)
GitHub Actions is the default CI/CD choice for a lot of teams… right up until your monthly spend stops being “a rounding error” and starts showing up in budget reviews.
Jenkins vs GitLab vs GitHub Actions: 2026 CI/CD Comparison Guide
Looking for the best CI/CD tool in 2026? This guide breaks down Jenkins, GitLab, and GitHub Actions with practical insights and decision criteria.
Platform-Agnostic Path Handling in Jenkins Pipelines
This guide provides practical guidance and examples for writing cross-platform Jenkins Pipelines that avoid sandbox approval issues and remain maintainable.
Improve DevOps Process Flow
Software delivery slows when work stalls in queues, handoffs, and approvals. “Improve flow” is the heuristic that asks: How do we reduce friction from idea to running, observable software? This post gives a practical playbook: map your value stream, shrink batch sizes, cut WIP, eliminate handoffs, automate the path to production, and instrument the system so bottlenecks are obvious and fixable.
Managing Jenkins Software tips to optimize DevOps maintenance
Optimize managing Jenkins software for performance, security, and efficiency with expert tips on configuration, resource allocation, plugin management, and more from a leading DevOps MSP.
Installing Jenkins Software
Jenkins is an automation server written in "Java" and has an embedded servlet container/application server built-in "Jetty". Jetty is developed and maintained by eclipse.org. It Provides a web server and javax.servlet container. It has impressive support for HTTP/2, WebSocket, OSGi, JMX and many other integrations. It is also very simple to use Jetty alternatives like Apache Tomcat (or) Glassfish to host Jenkins.
Servana Achieves ISO/IEC 27001:2022 Re-Certification and Launches New Security Services
We’re excited to announce that Servana has successfully completed our ISO/IEC 27001:2022 re-certification audit, conducted by the UKAS-accredited British Assessment Bureau, part of the Amtivo Group.
Managed Jenkins Summer Upgrade: 2.516.1 – Rolling Out 3rd August 2025
This update brings important security improvements, bug fixes, and performance enhancements designed to keep your environments running smoothly and securely.
Is a Managed Service CI similar to a SaaS CI
Ideologically we are similar however in the case of Servana we probably offer more comprehensive support and our customers all get a platform that they can do whatever they like with which isn't something you get with a SaaS solution.
The Kubernetes Dilemma
Kubernetes and the ecosystem surrounding it are all cloud-native; however, the cost of cloud-native platforms is really high and this leads to a dilemma can you reduce the complexity of your Kubernetes cluster by supplementing self-hosted cloud-native projects with cloud vendor services.
What is a DevOps Culture?
There's a lot of talk these days about DevOps culture. But what is it, really? And why does it matter? In this blog post, we'll explore the human side of DevOps and discuss why culture is so important in achieving success.
How DevOps eliminates constraints within silos
An organisation is like a machine. A machine is a system with components that work together; i.e (think integration and automation to achieve the desired outcome). When one part of the machine has a constraint, it can harm the entire system.
Heroku as Inspiration
Heroku inspired me way back. As a cloud platform, Heroku enabled developers to build and deploy software with no-ops expertise.
The Microservices Dilemma
You are currently working on a cloud-native application architecture and noticing that it seems to imply a micro-service architecture as well. However you yourself are not fully subscribed to a micro-service architecture for your application.
Re-platforming a Monolithic Application for Kubernetes
Micro-services is generally accepted as the only way to do cloud-native because the loosely coupling is considered a best practice for fault tolerant cloud architectures. However we believe its possible to reduce the capability of a monolith by extracting all of the non-business related functions and externalise them with cloud-native replacements
How I improve the Developer Experience
Over the past twenty years, we've tried very hard to learn from industrial processes to help make what we do in technology more efficient. Initially, the effort went into improving how we planned software projects.
What are the key components of a DevOps practice
DevOps practices are all about automation, cicd, security and monitoring. In this blog post, we will discuss the five key components of a successful DevOps practice!
Hosted Jenkins or Self-Hosted Jenkins
As a DevOps Engineer I need to consider whether to use a hosted or self-hosted Jenkins for many projects. The questions for each project vary and the answers are not always straightforward.
Top 3 reasons for a bad developer experience
If you are not a software developer then the best analogy for a bad developer experience would be the feelings of frustration you get when you are stuck in traffic because of roadwork. In your mind, you question the planning authorities thought process. They close a lane during peak hours and cause inexplicable congestion, impacting the lives of commuters that have work to do. Instead of working at night and finishing before the morning.
Why do we still use Jenkins Software in 2025?
Software development moves fast, and software engineering teams continuously grapple with the speed of change. To support this, they need tools that are adaptable and extensible. Enter Jenkins a powerful and versatile opensource automation server that has revolutionised modern software teams' operations. In this blog post, we delve into the exciting world of software development with Jenkins Software, exploring its continuous integration and continuous delivery (i.e. CICD) capabilities and how it can transform your software development processes. We believe there is a place for Jenkins Software in modern software development teams.
Managed Jenkins Performance
Over the years we have put hundreds of hours of effort into performance bench-marking so that our customers get a consistent Jenkins developer experience - regardless of their workloads.
About the StackTrack Blog
Our engineers and architects share practical advice on cloud infrastructure, DevOps automation, identity management, and security-first software delivery. Expect technical deep dives, platform comparisons, upgrade guides, and case studies from real customer projects.
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