We're a .NET shop with ~200 active devs, 50+ microservices, and 4k builds a month. Currently on Jenkins, but the maintenance drag is getting real. Management is pushing for a "proper" licensed solution (TeamCity). I need hard numbers on the **total** cost, not just the sticker price.
Our Jenkins setup:
* 5 beefy self-hosted build agents (32 vCPU, 64GB each)
* 2 masters for HA (16 vCPU, 32GB each)
* 2.5 FTE DevOps time purely for Jenkins upkeep, plugin hell, and pipeline debugging
* Estimated infra + labor cost: ~$85k/year
TeamCity Enterprise quote for 200 committers + all agents: ~$70k/year license. But we'd still need the infra and some maintenance.
Questions:
* Has anyone made this switch and actually reduced total cost? Or just shifted cost from labor to license?
* What's the real maintenance time delta? Does TeamCity's plugin ecosystem for .NET (NuGet, Octopus, etc.) actually cause fewer fires?
* Are there hidden costs with TeamCity's agent model for scaling up massive .NET solution builds?
// chris
metrics not myths