Scaling DevOps with Avyka: Migrating from Drone to Harness CI

Customer Overview

The client, a fast-growing technology company, initially adopted Drone CI for its lightweight design and ease of setup, enabling the team to get up and running quickly. While Drone met their early needs, its limitations became evident as the company scaled. Managing infrastructure and maintaining consistency across pipelines required significant manual effort, resulting in inefficiencies and increased operational overhead.

Seeking a modern CI solution that offered greater scalability, security, and automation, the company evaluated various alternatives before selecting Harness CI for its cost-effectiveness, built-in governance, and intelligent automation. To ensure a seamless migration and optimize their DevOps workflows, they partnered with Avyka.

Recognizing the Challenges

As the company's engineering initiatives grew, Drone CI lacked the ability to cater to their increasing demands. Major challenges involved:

• Manual Maintenance Burden: Self-hosted infrastructure of Drone needed continuous maintenance, such as updates, patches for security, and resource management, which contributed to inefficiency in operations.

  
  

• Limited Scalability: Drone’s architecture made it difficult to scale build capacity dynamically, resulting in slower builds and longer feedback loops as development teams grew.

  
  

• Governance Gaps and High Overhead: Lack of governance led to inconsistent CI pipeline management, introducing security and compliance risks, while maintaining Drone required dedicated resources, driving up costs, and shifting focus from innovation.

  
  

To stay competitive and enhance the efficiency of software delivery, the organization required a strong CI solution that could scale seamlessly and minimize operational complexity.

Engineering the Solution with Avyka and Harness

Avyka adopted a systematic migration strategy to migrate from Drone CI to Harness CI with minimal interruption. The solution utilized our 4-step migration process:

1. Assess: Performed an in-depth review of current Drone pipelines, dependencies, and integrations to develop a migration plan.

   
   

2. Pilot: Moved a low-risk pipeline to Harness CI to test functionality, refine configurations, and collect feedback.

   
   

3. Migrate: Migrated all CI workflows to Harness in stages, with automation, security, and performance enhancements at each stage.

   
   

4. Optimize: Tuned pipeline execution, applied governance policies, and used Harness' AI-powered insights for ongoing efficiency improvements.

By following this phased approach, Avyka ensured a seamless transition, eliminating legacy inefficiencies while empowering the company with a scalable, automated CI/CD ecosystem.

Value Delivered

After migrating to Harness CI, the company achieved significant improvements in efficiency, security, and cost management:

• Faster Builds & Lower Costs: Harness CI’s intelligent caching and fully managed infrastructure cut build times by 50% and reduced operational expenses.

  
  

• Enhanced Security & Governance: Built-in RBAC, policy enforcement, and security scanning ensured compliance across all pipelines.

  
  

• Better Developer Experience: Self-service templates and intuitive workflows enabled faster onboarding and higher-quality software delivery.

  
  

Key Takeaways

By migrating from Drone to Harness CI, the company successfully:

• Optimized software delivery with faster, automated build processes.

• Reduced operational overhead by eliminating manual infrastructure management.

• Strengthened governance and security with enterprise-grade compliance features.

• Enhanced scalability to support future growth without bottlenecks.

  
  

About Avyka

Avyka is a dedicated system integrator specializing in maximizing the potential of Harness to revolutionize cloud infrastructure and enhance DevSecOps practices. We help businesses modernize software delivery, improve security, and drive innovation through seamless CI/CD automation.