What build servers can function with workers behind NAT?

Question

I am looking for build servers, continuous integration of automation servers that can have clients (workers) that are behind NAT and that require non-root access on the clients.

This means that the worked is the one connecting to the server and asking for new jobs and not the opposite.

I am aware that it should be possible to setup VPNs or reverse ssh solutions but this is outside the scope of this question. I'm just looking for simple setups.

Answer 1

Here is what Jenkins documentation says about accessing slaves behind a firewall. I never tried running slaves behind a firewall myself, though.

If you decide to go with JNLP you'll need to think about how to start (or, more importantly, restart) your slaves when they go down (in my experience a slave connection may break for no apparent reason every now and then). For example, we connect via VNC to a slave machine and restart the slave via a shortcut (that runs the slave headlessly).