Learnings from BMW's global software development platform on AWS (AUT319)

Migrating BMW's Software Development Platform to the Cloud: Optimizing Cost and Improving Developer Productivity

Introduction

  • Christian, a Principal Solutions Architect at Adobe, and Seline Ron Winter from BMW, co-presented this session.
  • The presentation focuses on the migration of BMW's software development platform, called Codcraft, to a hybrid solution on AWS.

The Importance of Software Development in the Automotive Industry

  • Modern cars contain hundreds of electronic control units, and the trend is towards a domain architecture where functions are co-located by their domain.
  • This requires a large amount of software development, with the BMW 7 Series containing over 500 million lines of code.
  • BMW developed the Codcraft platform to handle this software development, including tools like a code repository, artifact repository, CI pipeline, and issue tracker.
  • The success of the Codcraft platform led to scaling challenges, which prompted BMW to explore a move to AWS.

The Hybrid Solution and Migration to AWS

  • The hybrid solution allowed BMW to move dedicated workloads to AWS as needed, while still utilizing on-premises resources.
  • The migration began with establishing a robust network infrastructure and replicating core services like GitHub and Artifactory to AWS.
  • Over the last 15 months, the majority of the infrastructure and CI jobs have been migrated to AWS, with the remaining jobs to be moved in the next 12 months.

Cost Optimization Learnings

  1. Right-sizing EC2 Instances: BMW used the Sysstat utility to collect metrics on CPU, memory, network, and I/O usage, allowing them to right-size their EC2 instances.
  2. Adopting Cluster Autoscaling: By moving to Carpenter, a flexible Kubernetes cluster autoscaler, BMW achieved a 66% reduction in AWS infrastructure costs.
  3. Leveraging EC2 Spot Instances: BMW leveraged EC2 Spot Instances, which can provide up to a 90% discount compared to on-demand instances. They used EC2 Fleet to manage a diversified Spot Instance pool, reducing the likelihood of spot reclaims.
  4. Improving Spot Reclaim Mitigation: Despite the cost savings, BMW experienced more spot reclaims than expected, which impacted developer productivity. They used the Spot Placement Score Tracker and the EC2 Instance Selector to optimize their Spot Instance configuration and further reduce spot reclaims.

Business Results

  • Developer satisfaction has continuously increased since the move to AWS, with no disruptions.
  • The Automotive IT Congress awarded Codcraft in the "Business Impact" category, indicating improved developer productivity and faster time-to-market.
  • Cost efficiency has improved, with a reduction in the overall platform cost and the cost per CI job.
  • However, BMW continues to work on scaling the platform cost-efficiently as the workload increases, contributing to a more sustainable future.

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