A deep dive into Vercel’s build infrastructure

What this post added

Introduced 'Hive', a new compute platform for Vercel builds, featuring a multi-tenant architecture with KVM and Firecracker microVMs (cells). Detailed the components: Hive (cluster), Box (bare metal), Cell (VM), Control Plane (orchestration), and API. Explained the build lifecycle, including pre-warmed cells and rapid provisioning for new cells. Highlighted performance improvements: 30% overall build time reduction, and up to 40% reduction for builds requiring new cell provisioning, with provisioning times reduced from 90s to 5s.