In the highly regulated world of institutional finance, efficiency and security are paramount. "SaaS Product for Institutional Finance," a leading service provider in this niche, faced significant challenges with their development and testing processes. This case study explores how they leveraged Bunnyshell's ephemeral environments to revolutionize their workflows, resulting in remarkable improvements in speed, efficiency, and developer satisfaction.
Introduction
The CTO of "SaaS Product for Institutional Finance" envisioned a seamless CI/CD pipeline where engineers could update ticket statuses and have tests run automatically against the relevant code branches. However, the existing setup fell short of this vision. Before implementing Bunnyshell, the company encountered several bottlenecks in development cycles. Their custom CI/CD setup created significant bottlenecks. Multiple jobs often queued up, waiting to be executed, which delayed the testing phases and impacted overall productivity. The limitations of this setup meant that deploying a new environment could take up to two days.
Challenges
The primary challenges faced by "SaaS Product for Institutional Finance" included:
- Slow Environment Deployment: Setting up new environments on AWS took up to two days, even with Terraform.
- Limited CI/CD Capacity: Their custom CI/CD job only allowed for a maximum of two stacks at a time.
- High Infrastructure Costs: Maintaining environments that were not always in use led to unnecessary expenses.
What Are Ephemeral Environments?
Ephemeral environments are temporary, on-demand environments created to serve a specific purpose, such as testing a new feature or running a particular set of tests, and are destroyed once their job is done. They are designed to be lightweight, quickly deployable, and easily disposable.
Benefits of Ephemeral Environments
- Rapid Deployment: Drastically reduce the time required to deploy new environments. The Lead DevSecOps Engineer noted, "Deploying a new environment used to take us 2 days, but with Bunnyshell, it now takes just 7 minutes.”
- Cost Efficiency: By creating environments only when needed and destroying them after use, ephemeral environments significantly cut down on infrastructure costs.
- Enhanced Testing: Allows the team to run isolated tests without interfering with the main development branch, leading to more reliable and accurate results.
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Solution
The journey to finding the right solution began with their Head Engineer, who introduced the concept of Environment as a Service (EaaS). Initially, they explored a different provider but found its pricing model and lack of platform flexibility unappealing. During their search for alternatives, they discovered Bunnyshell, which stood out due to its favorable pricing structure and the crucial ability to pause environments.
Integration Process and Technical Setup
Integrating Bunnyshell with their existing tools, Jira and Jenkins, was a smooth and efficient process. The steps included:
- Job Creation: Creating a new job based on their custom setup, replacing some code with the Bunnyshell CLI.
- Tool Integration: Setting up the connection between Jira and Jenkins to ensure seamless communication.
- Learning on the Go: Overcoming initial challenges with the help of Bunnyshell’s exceptional support team.
Results and Benefits
- Speed and Efficiency: The improvements have been significant. Setting up a new stack now takes just 7 minutes, compared to 2 days previously. "The automation of environment creation has been a game-changer. We no longer worry about high AWS infrastructure costs and the tedious process of setting up stacks manually.”
- Developer Experience: Developers have embraced the new processes enthusiastically. They now have the flexibility to use their own Bunnyshell accounts to tweak environment variables and change branches easily, making their day-to-day activities much more productive and less stressful.
- Cost Savings: The adoption of ephemeral environments has led to significant cost savings. By creating environments only when needed and destroying them after use, infrastructure costs have been greatly reduced. This pay-as-you-go model ensures that resources are used efficiently.
What's Next
Future Enhancements
"SaaS Product for Institutional Finance" plans to enhance their use of Bunnyshell by leveraging the newly launched environment protection feature to prevent accidental deletions, providing more stability and control over their infrastructure.
Anticipated Growth
As the company continues to grow, they anticipate an increased reliance on Bunnyshell. The scalability and flexibility of Bunnyshell align perfectly with their expansion plans. By leveraging Bunnyshell’s capabilities, they aim to maintain and even improve their current efficiency levels.
Advice to Peers
For other companies considering adopting Bunnyshell, "SaaS Product for Institutional Finance" offers the following advice: "I would highly recommend trying out Bunnyshell. The support, trial options, and cost-effectiveness make it an excellent choice for optimizing development and testing processes."
Conclusion
The adoption of Bunnyshell has been a transformative experience for "SaaS Product for Institutional Finance." By significantly reducing environment setup times from 2 days to just 7 minutes and enhancing the overall efficiency of their development processes, Bunnyshell has enabled them to achieve their operational goals with greater ease and precision. As they continue to expand and innovate, Bunnyshell will remain a crucial component of their technology stack, helping them navigate the complexities of the institutional finance market with confidence and agility.