Build artifacts (JARs, WARs, Docker images) are stored in a repository manager -- a centralized system dedicated to versioning, securing, and distributing binaries produced by CI builds.
Key Points: • Tools like JFrog Artifactory, Sonatype Nexus, or GitHub Packages act as the central store. • They support versioning and immutability, so a given build artifact never silently changes. • Access control lets teams restrict who can publish or pull artifacts, which matters for supply-chain security. • They integrate with Maven/Gradle and CI/CD pipelines to publish on every build and pull during deployment. • Docker images are typically stored in a container registry (which may be the same tool, e.g. Artifactory, or a dedicated one like ECR/GCR).
Example: A CI pipeline builds a JAR on every merge to main, publishes it to a Nexus repository tagged with the build's version and commit hash, and the deployment pipeline later pulls that exact artifact to deploy to production.
Interview Tip: A concise interview answer is:
"Artifacts go into a repository manager like Artifactory or Nexus, which versions and stores every build output centrally. That gives us traceability -- any deployed version can be traced back to an exact artifact -- and lets multiple teams and environments pull the same tested binary instead of rebuilding it."