Grab migrated their macOS CI/CD infrastructure from a US-based cloud vendor to a colocation facility in Southeast Asia, scaling from 1 Mac Pro to 250+ Mac minis. The migration achieved $2.4M in projected three-year savings and 20-40% performance improvements by reducing network latency to Git servers. The team evaluated cloud vs colocation vs on-premises options, chose Malaysia for its data center infrastructure and energy costs, and implemented zero-touch provisioning using Jamf MDM. The bare-metal approach avoided virtualization overhead while maintaining stability, with progressive migration ensuring no disruption to their 8 iOS apps serving millions of users.
Table of contents
IntroductionEconomy at scale: The rent vs. own equationThe Evaluation: Cloud vs colocation vs on-premExecutionResultColocation setup and rack configurationProvisioning and configurationLearnings and insightsConclusionJoin usSort: