This setting allows users to change the default durability mode for running Pipelines. In most cases this is a trade-off between performance and the ability for running pipelines to resume after unplanned Jenkins outages.

What does this do?

• Previously, running pipelines wrote data constantly, so that they could resume even if Jenkins fails. This setting gives the user the ability to adjust this write behavior.
• Higher-performance/lower-durability modes write data to disk much less often for running pipelines.
• Writing data less often can massively reduce build times for Pipelines with many steps or complex logic. For pipelines which spend most of their time waiting for a shell/batch script to run, the difference will be less visible.
• Running pipelines with lower durability settings may lose data if they do not finish and Jenkins is not shut down gracefully:
• A "graceful" shutdown where Jenkins goes through a full shutdown process, such as visiting http://[jenkins-server]/exit
• A "dirty" shutdown, such as using kill -9 to terminate the Jenkins process, may prevent incomplete pipelines from persisting data
• Pipelines that cannot persist data may not be able to resume or displayed in Blue Ocean/Stage View/etc.
• Pipelines will generally write log data regardless of durability settings.
• Some modes use an "atomic write" option - this helps ensure that pipeline build files aren't overwritten or left partially written if something fails.
• Atomic writes may place more stress on filesystems, so especially with networked storage it may be faster not to use them.

Note: defaults also be set globally under Manage Jenkins > Configure System.