What is Azure Pipelines?
Azure Pipelines is a cloud-based CI/CD service that is part of Azure DevOps. The service enables automated building, testing, and deploying of applications for any platform and cloud. Pipelines supports containers, Kubernetes, VMs, and serverless deployments.
With YAML-based pipeline definitions, teams can version their build and release processes as code and manage them in Git.
Core Features
- YAML-based pipeline-as-code definition
- Parallel jobs on Microsoft-hosted or self-hosted agents
- Support for Windows, Linux, macOS builds
- Integration with GitHub, Bitbucket, Azure Repos
- Deployment to Azure, AWS, GCP, on-premises
Typical Use Cases
CI/CD for Cloud-native Apps: Automatic build on every commit, unit tests, container build, and deployment to Kubernetes.
Multi-Stage Releases: Promotion of artifacts through dev, staging, production with approval gates.
Infrastructure as Code: Deployment of Terraform or Bicep templates as part of the pipeline.
Benefits
- Free tier with 1,800 build minutes per month
- Scalable, parallel build capacity
- Deep integration with Azure services
- Support for all common languages and frameworks
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the difference between Azure Pipelines and GitHub Actions?
Both are CI/CD systems. Azure Pipelines is part of Azure DevOps with deeper Azure integration and enterprise features. GitHub Actions is GitHub-native. Both can execute similar workflows.
Can I use custom build agents?
Yes, self-hosted agents enable builds on your own infrastructure for special hardware, compliance requirements, or access to local resources.
How is billing structured?
Free tier: 1,800 minutes/month for private projects. Beyond that, per parallel job or Microsoft-hosted minutes.
Does Azure Pipelines support containers?
Yes, Pipelines can build containers, push to Azure Container Registry, and deploy to AKS or other container platforms.
Integration with innFactory
As a Microsoft Solutions Partner, innFactory supports you with Azure Pipelines: pipeline design, CI/CD best practices, migration from other systems, and DevOps process optimization.
