Case Study: EA2D
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"It blew my mind when I saw all the data-driven things you can do with Hosted Chef. Taking the training convinced me that we should use a Hosted Chef client-server model and employ Opscode. There was no sense in us running our own Chef server. It's just another server that we would have to deal with that wouldn't provide any value back to the business."
Michael Babineau, EA2D Systems Architect
The Challenge
EA2D, a development studio at leading interactive entertainment software company Electronic Arts (EA), creates high-quality, social games for avid gamers across connected platforms including online and mobile. With the imminent beta-release of its first game, Dragon AgeTM Legends, its platform team needed to prepare for millions of online users that would flood its systems architecture. To manage the high demand, EA2D wanted a powerful, open- source and community-oriented configuration management tool that enabled full automation, scalability and reliability.
The Solution
Operating as a "start-up" within Electronic Arts, EA2D wasn't constrained by existing IT services, and could explore a solution that best met its needs. It discovered Opscode's Hosted Chef, a server configuration management and infrastructure automation engine. Opscode's Hosted Chef (OHC) lets IT managers express the design of the company's infrastructure in code, affording the benefits of repeatability, agility and version-control. OHC is a centrally managed data store for information about company servers which enables client software to take dynamic, "infrastructure aware" actions across any portion of the environment. Those integrations enabled EA2D to scale more quickly and better manage its servers, saving both time and money.
The Results
- Created repeatable, fully automated infrastructure.
- Enabled manageable version control of infrastructure definitions.
- Reduced set-up time from days and months to minutes.
- Increased agility and reliability to efficiently manage platform configuration.
- Improved configuration to easily scale infrastructure.
About EA2D
EA2D, a development studio at leading interactive entertainment software company Electronic Arts (EA), creates high-quality, social games for avid gamers across connected platforms including online and mobile.
ea2d.com
About Opscode
Opscode is the leader in cloud infrastructure automation. We help companies of all sizes develop fully automated server infrastructures that scale easily and predictably; can be quickly rebuilt in any environment, and save developers and systems engineers time and money.
Our team is comprised of web infrastructure experts responsible for building and operating some of the world's largest websites and cloud computing platforms. Opscode is headquartered in Seattle, Washington, USA.
