The challenge
Aspyr, a leading company in the gaming industry, faced significant challenges in managing its cloud infrastructure. Carlos Bravo, the System Administrator at Aspyr, shared his experience of transitioning from a traditional on-premises data center background to a more DevOps cloud environment.
With limited coding experience, Carlos initially found it challenging to work with Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and use it to manage infrastructure effectively. However, after adopting Firefly, Carlos realized how much easier it became to codify and manage infrastructure.
Daniel Hagen, the Director of IT at Aspyr, shared his perspective on the challenges they faced during their migration to the cloud. Their transition was initially driven by the Texas Winter Storm of 2021, affectionately known to Texans as “Snowmageddon”. With power out across the state for several days, Aspyr moved production workloads to AWS as part of a disaster recovery effort. However, this rapid shift resulted in a scattered and unoptimized cloud environment. Aspyr struggled with resource management and cost control amidst the chaos. In addition, a project that was shut down was never completely removed from the cloud infrastructure. VMs were eliminated but the cloud resources to which they were connected were not, creating ongoing costs that were difficult to track down.
The solution
Discovering Firefly at AWS ReInvent was a turning point for Daniel and the team. Firefly's challenge to “Stop ClickOps” and transition to infrastructure as code resonated with Daniel’s goals. He was seeking a more efficient and repeatable framework for managing Aspyr’s cloud infrastructure. and Firefly's ability to transform existing resources into IaC proved to be a game-changer.
Firefly's flexibility to support multiple IaC frameworks, such as Terraform and Pulumi, was greatly appreciated by Daniel. The team started with Terraform, ingesting existing resources seamlessly. While exploring other options like Pulumi, Daniel valued the freedom to switch frameworks without being locked into a specific oneorrDaniel says, “This flexibility allows Aspyr to adapt to evolving technologies and choose the best fit for our needs.”
The results
The adoption of Firefly's codification feature significantly accelerated Aspyr’s IaC coverage. Instead of spending years on this transition, they achieved substantial progress in just a few months. The time and effort saved by using Firefly eliminated the need to hire additional engineers or contractors, enabling the existing team to focus on other critical tasks. Furthermore, Aspyr experienced notable improvements in key performance indicators (KPIs), starting with cost savings.
The insights provided by Firefly proved invaluable to Carlos and the team.
"With one pane of glass for all my tools, I can quickly find and troubleshoot any assets or services. Firefly has saved me a lot of time and effort." - Carlos Bravo, System Administrator
By using Firefly, Aspyr was able to optimize their resources, identify unused assets, and reduce costs in various areas. Firefly's comprehensive insights gave them a clear understanding of their environment, enabling informed decisions for better efficiency and cost savings.
Firefly's Insights feature, driven by OPA community best practices and custom AI-driven policies, empowered Aspyr to identify unused resources and optimize their infrastructure, resulting in cost savings of $20k per month. The tool also helped the team improve reliability and efficiency by providing visibility into their environment, enabling better decision-making and resource utilization.
By simplifying the transition to infrastructure as code, providing comprehensive insights, and offering flexibility across multiple frameworks, Firefly enabled Aspyr to enhance their operational efficiency, reduce costs, and achieve better control over their cloud infrastructure.
