How Cadence simplified development and improved product quality with mirrord

TL;DR

• Cadence engineers save several hours each week by using mirrord to work in production-like environments locally.
• mirrord eliminated repetitive build-and-deploy cycles, allowing the team to focus on feature development and production issues.
• mirrord has enhanced product quality by allowing developers to work in environments that closely mirror production.

The challenge: A fast and seamless approach to run code locally in a production-like environment

Maintaining local development environments that mirror production setups is a complex and time-intensive task, especially as environments continuously evolve. Cadence’s engineering team struggled with replicating production conditions efficiently, leading to delays in feature development despite using containerization.

“Keeping environments synchronized was very time-consuming, as environments are constantly evolving. We faced difficulties developing new features and encountered issues in production that weren’t visible locally,” said Eric Hauser, CTO of Cadence.

Eric noted that these challenges were a recurring pain point. Frustration among engineers grew, prompting a search for a solution to simplify development processes, minimize delays, and reduce errors.

The solution: A fast and seamless approach to run code locally in a production-like environment

While exploring solutions to their challenges, the team discovered mirrord and quickly identified it as the ideal tool for their needs.

“The architecture of mirrord was more appealing, particularly its method of replacing syscalls, allowing apps to function as if they were directly running in the cluster. Other tools required trade-offs, which mirrord avoided due to its superior architecture,” shared Eric.

What set mirrord apart was its straightforward approach to replicating production environments locally—without requiring complex setups or compromises. Its configurability ensured seamless integration with Cadence’s intricate applications and diverse port setups. Every application they tested worked flawlessly, demonstrating mirrord’s reliability and versatility.

Adoption was impressively fast, with the entire team incorporating mirrord into their workflows within just two weeks.

“The entire team adopted mirrord within two weeks, which is far quicker than with other engineering tools we’ve tried,” Eric noted.

The results: Boosted productivity and higher product quality

With mirrord, Cadence streamlined their development workflows—eliminating the need for repetitive build-and-deploy cycles, reducing the overhead of keeping environments synchronized, and simplifying onboarding. These improvements enabled the team to focus on delivering features faster and resolving production issues more effectively.

“Each engineer saves several hours per week,” estimates Eric.

Beyond these time savings, mirrord has also enhanced product quality by allowing developers to work in environments that closely mirror production.

“One of the biggest outcomes is that it didn’t just improve developer efficiency—it significantly improved product quality as well,” noted Eric.

While onboarding wasn’t a major bottleneck for Cadence, mirrord further simplified the process, ensuring that new developers could hit the ground running effortlessly. Feedback from the team was overwhelmingly positive, with engineers expressing gratitude for how it simplified their workflows.

“mirrord has had as big an impact on development productivity at Cadence as AI has,” Eric remarked.

By addressing inefficiencies in their workflows with mirrord, Cadence achieved a faster, more reliable development process, allowing the team to focus on delivering impactful results instead of wasting time on avoidable delays.