Grab's Mac Cloud Exit supercharges macOS CI/CD | Endigest
Grab Tech
|DevOps
Grab's Mac Cloud Exit supercharges macOS CI/CD
2025-11-06
15 min read
0
Endigest AI Core Summary
Grab migrated its macOS CI/CD infrastructure from a US cloud vendor to a self-owned colocation cluster in Malaysia, achieving major cost and performance gains.
•The cluster scaled from 1 Mac Pro to 250+ Mac minis supporting multiple iOS apps, including the Grab app with 2.5M+ lines of code
•Apple's EULA requires a minimum 24-hour lease for macOS instances, making cloud macOS compute roughly 10x more expensive than Linux (per GitHub Actions pricing)
•Malaysia was selected over Singapore for colocation due to lower energy costs, proximity to Git servers, and strong data center infrastructure
•Bare-metal Mac minis were chosen over virtualization due to observed performance and stability trade-offs in macOS virtualization environments