Scaling CI horizontally with Buildkite, Kubernetes, and multiple pipelines, with Ben Poland

EPISODE · Sep 30, 2025

Scaling CI horizontally with Buildkite, Kubernetes, and multiple pipelines, with Ben Poland

from KubeFM

Ben Poland walks through Faire's complete CI transformation, from a single Jenkins instance struggling with thousands of lines of Groovy to a distributed Buildkite system running across multiple Kubernetes clusters.He details the technical challenges of running CI workloads at scale, including API rate limiting, etcd pressure points, and the trade-offs of splitting monolithic pipelines into service-scoped ones.You will learn:How to architect CI systems that match team ownership and eliminate shared failure points across servicesKubernetes scaling patterns for CI workloads, including multi-cluster strategies, predictive node provisioning, and handling API throttlingPerformance optimization techniques like Git mirroring, node-level caching, and spot instance management for variable CI demandsMigration strategies and lessons learned from moving away from monolithic CI, including proof-of-concept approaches and avoiding the sunk cost fallacySponsorThis episode is brought to you by Testkube—where teams run millions of performance tests in real Kubernetes infrastructure. From air-gapped environments to massive scale deployments, orchestrate every testing tool in one platform. Check it out at testkube.ioMore infoFind all the links and info for this episode here: https://ku.bz/klBmzMY5-Interested in sponsoring an episode? Learn more.

NOW PLAYING

Scaling CI horizontally with Buildkite, Kubernetes, and multiple pipelines, with Ben Poland

0:00 0:00

No transcript for this episode yet

We transcribe on demand. Request one and we'll notify you when it's ready — usually under 10 minutes.

No similar episodes found.

No similar podcasts found.

URL copied to clipboard!