Jfrog review by Jannatul
What do you like best about the product?
Best about Jfrog is security of its platform due to which I feel most secure platform to store the artifacts.
What do you dislike about the product?
Least helpful if you want to use it as CICD tool compared Gitlab. Dislike about is the pricing model
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Problems solved by Jfrog is software packaging and sharing the artifacts with the end user in most secured way
Manageable, regular updates, and core functionality worked fine
What is our primary use case?
The main use case was to store the artifacts, store the binaries, basically. And then we used it as a container registry as well.
One of my tasks was to get X-ray running. I got the product running and tested it, but users never really started using it. So, from the user perspective, I don't really know how much they used X-ray.
What I can say about X-ray is that it did what Artifactory advertised. So, from that point of view, in my opinion, it worked fine, but we never really got to use it too deeply. We never got enough requests from our customers, the developers, or the security management team to implement some checks or block downloads from Artifactory, even when the software is too old or has some vulnerabilities.
That was a disappointment for me because I worked on the installation and management of X-ray for a couple of months. But that's not something that X-ray is responsible for.
How has it helped my organization?
For me, Artifactory was just a system that I needed to maintain, install, update, and back up.
What is most valuable?
I was an administrator of Artifactory, the person who manages the software. For me, it was manageable and stable. The upgrades were coming regularly, and the documentation on how to upgrade the system was clear.
Then, when we had to implement certain customizations because of the way our networking is set up, it could get messy. But with the help of support, we got it working. Sometimes, the database got corrupted or something wrong happened, and then we needed support. In most cases, they were able to help us and sort it out.
So far, the software worked fine. There are some other products like Artifactory Insights that provide some level of monitoring and management and graphs of utilization.
What needs improvement?
Sometimes the documentation was sort of messy because there are many possibilities for where and how to install Artifactory. So sometimes, I got a little bit lost, and it wasn't very clear which path in the documentation to take. But when I tested things and could just follow the manual, that was working fine.
Sometimes the UI was not working as expected. Users were complaining that they didn't see their Artifactory, but they had to clear their browser cookies or something. It was just the browser taking some information from the caches of the user's PC. So sometimes, this can be better. The UI could get laggy; maybe because our environment reached its limit. We had a large number of assets. It could take time for all the artifacts to load.
If there could be some better features for me, it would be being able to upgrade Artifactory directly from the UI. I think that is something that JFrog maybe offers with the cloud solution, but I don't know. For some reason, we still use the standalone on-premise solution. Maybe that version doesn't provide this functionality.
For how long have I used the solution?
I've worked with Artifactory for two years.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
For the most part, it's pretty stable. We had some performance issues. Sometimes, users complained that it was slow, especially with replication. We upload the artifacts into a central Artifactory that then replicates the artifacts to our other networking environments. Sometimes, it may be slow because of our network.
Sometimes, it seemed to me that something was happening in the architecture itself that was making this process slow. Either it was maybe some kind of Artifactory process running in the background that slowed down this replication process, or, at times, I had this kind of feeling that I don't know why it's not replicating that Artifactory. And I wasn't able to really tell the user what was happening. It was mostly with the container images. Sometimes, it seemed that the container image was not replicated completely. You can see the container image in the other location, but the container image consists of several parts. And for example, one or two parts were missing. So then, the user was not able to download the container image and to really use it. So there were cases like this, and we had to basically delete the artifact in the affected location and try to replicate it again. I think, if I remember correctly, we were solving this issue with support.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
We have piles of data in there. We put lots of data into just one Artifactory. There were several millions of artifacts and terabytes of data, like hundreds of terabytes of data, on the file system.
We used three or four virtual computers to run the software and utilize the load, and those machines handled it fine. So, from this kind of point, it was okay.
But from the manageability point of view, I would probably do it differently. I would probably split the data into several Artifactory instances because of backups and such things. So, from the scalability point of view, it was scalable.
How was the initial setup?
We had developed some Ansible scripts that deployed Artifactory. I don't remember it exactly, but I guess they were sort of using the solution that JFrog provides. They have some Ansible scripts. So, I think we used those scripts to some extent and then modified them to our use case. That's the way we deployed Artifactory with Ansible scripts.
I came to an almost ready solution that was done by my colleague. I tweaked a little bit here and there depending on the changing requirements, like from the security team that told us to install certain firewalls or antivirus software. So, there were not any significant challenges to using those scripts.
From my point of view, the maintenance aspect is not difficult. Doing the backups or updates usually worked fine.
What other advice do I have?
I personally would probably recommend it. For me, it did what it did well, or at least that was my feeling from it. So, I would recommend it.
Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.
Best for Artifact Storage
What do you like best about the product?
It was very easy to implment the Artifact storage solution for our Docker products and NPM packages. We had a seamless integration and migration from Artifactory to Jfrog.
What do you dislike about the product?
The pricing was not transparent initially and initially we expected more help from the customer support.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Fast Storage and Retrival of Packages.
Security analysis along with the Artifact Storage.
JFrog Artifactory User Review
What do you like best about the product?
Jfrog's interface is very user-friendly and it is much reliable to securely store and distribute binary files. The tracking and versioning along with its robust security measures enhanced our workflow efficiency.
What do you dislike about the product?
Some features are bit complex to set up initially and their pricing is bit higher comparitively. Some advanced features requires higher resource, so it is affecting the system performance in large scale environment.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It helps me to organize and manage our software files more efficiently and it enhances security to our files with JFrog we can control who has access to what it ensures our software is safe.
Efficient Artifact Management with JFrog"
What do you like best about the product?
Jfrog is the best artifact Lifecycle management solution I've ever used, it is fast and reliable, and the configuration is straightforward and very fast to get things done.
What do you dislike about the product?
While JFrog is a powerful tool, there are areas for improvement:
Pricing: JFrog's pricing can be on the higher side for small to medium-sized businesses. It would be great to see more budget-friendly plans or options for startups.
Learning Curve: For beginners, JFrog Artifactory may have a learning curve due to its extensive feature set. Improved onboarding resources and documentation would be helpful.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
JFrog's efficient artifact storage and retrieval system ensures that developers have access to the correct versions of dependencies. This results in fewer issues related to incorrect or missing artifacts and improves development productivity.
Easy to use, easy to set up
What do you like best about the product?
I like using JFrog as it is easy to use and set up. Once that process is finished, I can download packages on the daily without having to go through additional steps to reauthenticate my packages.
What do you dislike about the product?
I have nothing to dislike about jFrog at this time.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
JFrog solves the security aspect of having packages that are company private and need to distributed throughout multiple timezones
JFROG Review
What do you like best about the product?
Jfrog is a good vendor support tool. Here we can modify and store large artifacts.
What do you dislike about the product?
Too complex sometimes.
Difficult to showcase issues to jfrog vendors.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It solves variety of problems like handeling complex data, permission targets etc. We are using JFROG tool in my company. And we work in managing artifactory tool.
A company that partners with clients
What do you like best about the product?
Aside from offering best-in-class products, JFrog truly has second-to-none customer support service. Their R&D actively solicits input from users and partners in future developments.
What do you dislike about the product?
Like any other Software company, the product is not always flawless; however, they strive to correct the issues as fast as possible.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
It provides a single source of truth for our software supply chain.
We manage our entire CI/CD through our pipelines.
JFrog Xray - A Devops Helper
What do you like best about the product?
JFrog Xray is easily integrable with the existing CI/CD pipeline
What do you dislike about the product?
There may be a scope for improvement where the no of artifacts is increased; then there is a slowness observed.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
JFrog Xray has helped us in smoothing the CI/CD pipeline. It has a wide range of repository-type support, which enabled us to do different projects under one umbrella.
Review - JFrog Pipelines
What do you like best about the product?
JFrog Pipelines provides organizations with a powerful tool for automating and managing the software delivery pipeline, enabling faster, more efficient, and more secure software delivery.
What do you dislike about the product?
Setting up and configuring JFrog Pipelines can be challenging, especially for organizations unfamiliar with DevOps automation tools. It is a tool offered commercially and may not be feasible for all organizations, notably small and medium-sized businesses.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
JFog pipelines eliminate manual processes, reduce errors, and ensure consistency across environments, leading to faster, more efficient, and more secure software delivery.
