DevOps Articles

A Look at the Slack’s New GitOps-Based Build Platform

Enterprise messaging giant https://slack.com/ has modernized its build platform, forgoing the individual https://www.jenkins.io/ clusters for a more standardized model to improve developer efficiency and user experience. It was a necessary move: Slack is growing at a rapid pace, with its revenue https://www.businessofapps.com/data/slack-statistics/#:~:text=Business%20communication-,Slack%20revenue,-Slack%20made%20%24902 every year since 2014.

The idea of allowing each team to create their own customized Jenkins cluster, known as “Snowflake Clusters,” was a solid idea in 2014.

At a high level, the Build team would provide a platform for “build as a service” with enough knobs for customization of Jenkins clusters.

The Build team managed systems in the build platform infrastructure and the remaining systems would be managed by service owner teams using the build platform.