How DFINITY moved from self-hosted to Namespace
Executive Summary
DFINITY, a leading blockchain technology company, successfully migrated from self-hosted macOS runners to Namespace's cloud infrastructure, achieving dramatic performance improvements and operational efficiency gains. The migration reduced our build times from 45 minutes to 3-4 minutes in best-case scenarios while eliminating maintenance overhead.
"Namespace is an impressive team offering a great product; a year after initial contact we are happier than ever to have made the decision to use namespace infrastructure."
Nicolas Mattia, Software Engineer
The Challenge
We faced several critical infrastructure challenges that were impacting our development velocity:
- Aging Hardware: Our self-hosted macOS hardware fleet (2018-2019 Intel Macs) was becoming outdated and unreliable.
- Maintenance Burden: Significant engineering time was being consumed by macOS runner maintenance and troubleshooting.
- Build Reliability Issues: Average full rebuilds were frequently failing to complete successfully
- Limited Scalability: The on-premises infrastructure couldn't scale to meet our growing development team's needs
The Solution
We chose Namespace for its comprehensive cloud runner solution, attracted by several key capabilities:
- Seamless GitHub Actions Integration: Simple setup process with minimal migration effort
- Command Line Flexibility: Ability to spin up instances directly from the command line for debugging and testing
- Advanced Caching: Built-in Bazel cache support for faster builds
- Multi-Architecture Support: Access to both AMD64 and ARM64 Linux runners alongside macOS options
Implementation & Adoption
The migration began with macOS runners exclusively, but organically expanded as other teams discovered the benefits of Namespace's Linux infrastructure. Multiple development teams gradually moved their workflows to leverage both AMD64 and ARM64 Linux runners, demonstrating the platform's versatility.
Results & Impact
- 90% Faster Builds: Best-case build times dropped from ~45 minutes to 3-4 minutes
- Improved Reliability: Average full rebuilds, which previously were often failing, now complete successfully in ~20 minutes
- Consistent Performance: Eliminated the variability and failures common with aging hardware
Operational Benefits
- Eliminated Maintenance Overhead: No more time spent on runner maintenance and hardware management
- Enhanced Reproducibility: Virtualized environments reduced build pollution between jobs
- Improved Portability: The Build system became more portable through adaptation to Namespace's standardized environment
- Better Stability: Consistent, clean build environments for every job
- Cost Efficiency: Better price compared to GitHub
Team Efficiency
- Resource Recovery: Our engineering teams reclaimed significant time previously spent on infrastructure maintenance
- Seamless Migration: Migration completed with almost no migration cost
- Enhanced Visibility: Improved usage monitoring and team communication capabilities
Conclusion
DFINITY's success with Namespace demonstrates how the right cloud infrastructure partner can transform development operations. The first steps were simple due to a seamless GitHub Actions integration. Throughout the incremental adoption, we’ve enjoyed the strong communication and support from the Namespace team. Namespace is a platform that grows with dev team's needs across multiple architectures.
The migration to Namespace enabled DFINITY to modernize our CI/CD infrastructure while achieving significant performance improvements and operational efficiencies.
Ready to transform your CI/CD performance like DFINITY? Contact Namespace to learn how our cloud runners can accelerate your development workflow.