How E-Line Media Cut Jenkins Costs by 60% Leveraging AccelByte’s Professional Services Smart Infrastructure Overhaul

If you’re managing builds, releases, and infrastructure in a game studio, you know the pain: long queues, laggy pipelines, and Cloud bills that feel like final boss fights… Even top-tier game studios like E-Line Media can face infrastructure challenges that bottleneck progress and inflate costs. 

“AccelByte's expertise and strategic guidance fundamentally improved our Jenkins infrastructure. Through their thoughtful architecture redesign and cost optimization efforts, we've achieved over 60% in infrastructure savings, significantly improved build efficiency, and enhanced our ability to scale. Their team has been an exceptional partner—thorough, responsive, and deeply knowledgeable.” - Michael Brune, Lead Engineer, E-Line Media

The Challenge

E-Line Media’s Jenkins infrastructure, was under pressure from multiple fronts:

• High Operational Costs: Each new game project demanded separate EC2 instances, causing costs to scale uncontrollably.
  
  
• Inefficient Resource Utilization: Over-provisioned compute and storage resources led to chronic underutilization.
  
  
• Scalability Limitations: A tightly coupled Jenkins Master-Agent model limited system scalability and responsiveness.

These pain points were taking a toll on the company’s budget and slowing their development pipeline.

The Solution

AccelByte Professional Services team stepped in with a comprehensive strategy to modernize and optimize Jenkins for cost and performance:

• Decoupled Jenkins Architecture:
  
  • Master-Agent Separation: Jenkins Master and Agent roles were cleanly separated to avoid resource contention and ensure better system reliability.
    
    
  • Dynamic Auto-Scaling Agents: Agents were configured to scale dynamically based on active workloads, reducing idle resource usage and adapting to varying build demands automatically.

• Migration to Bare-Metal Servers:
  
  • Hybrid Infrastructure Model: Jenkins Agent workloads were migrated from EC2 to a dedicated bare-metal environment, improving both cost and performance.
    
    
  • Bare-Metal Specifications: A Dell R350 server with an Intel Xeon E-2388G CPU, 32 GB RAM, and 4 TB total disk storage was deployed specifically for build tasks. This setup provides consistent high I/O performance, especially valuable for large Unreal Engine projects.
    
    
  • Cloud Cost Offloading: Moving agent jobs to the bare-metal server helped eliminate high hourly costs associated with EC2 build agents.

• Resource Optimization:
  
  • EC2 Instance Downgrade: The Jenkins controller was migrated from a Windows c5a.4xlarge instance (16 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM) to a more affordable Windows r5a.xlarge instance (4 vCPUs, 32 GB RAM), significantly lowering compute costs.
    
    
  • Storage Efficiency: E-Line’s previous setup used over 6 TB of combined gp2/gp3 SSD storage, incurring over $540/month in EBS charges. This was streamlined to 512 GB total, bringing storage costs down to ~$46/month.
    
    
  • Lifecycle Policies: Automated policies were established to delete outdated AMIs and EBS snapshots, reducing unnecessary resource consumption and associated costs.
    
    
  • Regular Audits: Monthly infrastructure audits were introduced to identify underutilized or orphaned resources, keeping the AWS footprint lean and efficient.

The Results

• Over 60% Monthly Cost Savings
  By shedding unnecessary cloud spend and right-sizing infrastructure, E-Line Media slashed expenses dramatically.
  
  
• Increased System Efficiency
  Dynamic agent scaling aligned resource use with actual demand, eliminating waste and improving performance.
  
  
• Streamlined Operations
  Automated cleanup processes and regular audits ensured ongoing optimization and budget control.

“AccelByte's team demonstrated exceptional expertise from day one. They not only delivered a robust, cost-effective Jenkins infrastructure, but remained consistently available, insightful, and supportive well beyond the initial engagement. Their proactive approach and depth of knowledge had a lasting impact on our workflows, and their commitment to our success has been nothing short of outstanding.” - Michael Brune, Lead Engineer, E-Line Media

Build automation should feel like a power-up, not a tax. Whether you're pushing frequent updates, running complex test suites, or managing multiple titles, the right Jenkins setup saves more than time—it saves sanity and budget.

Learn how AccelByte can help you re-imagine what is possible and get started for FREE today!