Burst: On-Demand Elastic Capacity for Peak Performance

Mac DevOps workloads are dynamic. Project cycles, deadlines, and sudden testing demands can strain infrastructure. Traditional static setups often lead to costly over-provisioning or frustrating bottlenecks. This is where Burst comes in.

What is Burst?

Burst provides dedicated, on-demand elastic cluster node capacity for your Orka environment. It's designed to quickly and seamlessly expand your cluster during heavy workloads.

Why Your Organization Needs Burst

Elasticity

When build requests surge (e.g., end-of-sprint or quarter pushes), insufficient capacity means growing CI/CD queues and reduced developer productivity. Burst instantly adds macOS compute capacity to meet these demands. This means continuous, high-speed execution, with no more waiting or stalled pipelines.

Cost Efficiency

Burst operates on a consumption-based model. It's sold in convenient capacity bundles, functioning like prepaid credits that burn down by the hour as you use Burst nodes. You pay only for what you use, making it highly cost-effective for seasonal or project-based increases.

Enhanced Control

Administrators can activate and deactivate Burst capacity through the MacStadium Admin Portal, ensuring precise management of operational spend by consuming resources only when necessary.

Seamless CI/CD Integration

Burst integrates effortlessly with your existing CI tooling, including GitHub Actions, GitLab Runners, and Jenkins. Simply move Burst nodes into active namespaces when you need them and back out when you don’t to prevent scheduling.

Rapid Availability

After initial setup and provisioning, dedicated Burst nodes are available within as soon as a few minutes from user activation, depending on the number of nodes activated. This rapid provisioning minimizes delays for critical workloads.

Monitoring Burst Usage

Monitoring Burst nodes is consistent with your existing Orka monitoring setup. Simply collect the same metrics from your Prometheus server for Orka burst nodes while they are active. You'll know which nodes are Burst nodes via your IP Plan in the MacStadium portal and are responsible for manually labeling them for scheduling and tracking.

Foundational Enhancements for a More Robust Orka

Beyond Burst capability, Orka 3.3 delivers critical platform updates and architectural refinements that reinforce its position as the premier macOS virtualization platform.

Kubernetes v1.33

Additional Performance and Compatibility Improvements

Support for macOS guest versions 15.4 & 15.5



Orka components are now individually versioned and displayable with the `orka3 version` and `orka3 node list -o wide` commands



For additional details, please refer to the Orka 3.3 Release Notes.

A Future-Forward Foundation

Orka 3.3 represents MacStadium's ongoing commitment to delivering the most advanced and reliable macOS cloud infrastructure. By introducing Burst capacity to Orka, we're providing the flexibility you need to manage dynamic CI/CD workloads. Coupled with critical Kubernetes updates and foundational architectural improvements, Orka 3.3 ensures your Apple development remains productive, cost-efficient, and future-ready.



We encourage you to explore Orka 3.3 and discover how these enhancements can further optimize your enterprise CI/CD pipelines. For any questions or to add Burst capacity to your account, please reach out to your MacStadium Account team.