Grab's Mac Cloud Exit supercharges macOS CI/CD

Summary

Grab moved its macOS CI/CD infrastructure from a US cloud vendor to a colocation cluster in Malaysia, closer to its Git servers in Southeast Asia. The change followed growth from one office Mac Pro to more than 250 Mac minis, rising demand, job queues, and cloud costs that made ownership or colocation more attractive at scale. Grab selected bare-metal hardware after comparing cloud, colocation, and on-premises options, then migrated progressively while monitoring failure rates, performance, and reliability; the later infrastructure also uses zero-touch provisioning to reduce manual setup as the cluster grows. The migration produced projected savings of more than $2.4 million over three years and performance improvements of 20–40%, while the team chose allocated-kilowatt power commitments and retained bare metal because macOS virtualization’s performance or stability trade-offs did not justify it.

Takeaways

1. 1

   The cluster grew from one office Mac Pro to more than 250 Mac minis, while 2022 peak demand often exceeded available capacity; Grab projected a need for more than 400 machines in 2025.

2. 2

   macOS compute costs are affected by Apple’s 24-hour minimum lease requirement and limited rack-optimized hardware options, making colocation or on-premises setups more cost-effective at Grab’s scale.

3. 3

   The migration delivered projected savings of more than $2.4 million over three years and improved performance by 20–40%, according to the reported results.