Case Study
Zero-Incident CI/CD for a Privileged Access Server Fleet
Summary
Modernized the delivery pipeline for an internal Linux server management application monitoring elevated-access privileges across roughly 400 US and UK servers, moving from manual releases to a fully automated, contract-tested pipeline.
Impact
Cut vulnerability remediation effort from ~15 developer-days per month to ~2, while sustaining zero production incidents across 6 months of multiple-times-per-week deployments.
Challenge
The application manages elevated-access privileges on ~400 Linux servers across the US and UK, a high-risk surface where undetected breaking changes or unpatched dependencies carry outsized security risk. Before the rebuild there were no integration tests, and vulnerability remediation was almost entirely manual.
Architecture
Serverless application (AWS Lambda) sitting behind a proxy layer, deployed through a Jenkins pipeline with consumer-driven contract tests (Pactflow) verifying compatibility between the proxy and application layers on every change, backed by unit and integration test suites and Mend Renovate for automated minor-version dependency updates.
Key Decisions
Adopted consumer-driven contract testing specifically to guard the proxy-to-application-layer boundary, catching breaking changes before they reached production rather than relying on manual regression checks. Paired this with Mend Renovate to auto-remediate minor version bumps continuously, shrinking the vulnerability backlog proactively instead of batching upgrades reactively.
Scale Considerations
Manages roughly 400 Linux servers across US and UK environments, with deployments shipping multiple times per week and zero production incidents in the 6 months since the new pipeline went live.
Last updated: July 11, 2026