debian-mirror-gitlab/doc/administration/reference_architectures/2k_users.md

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Reference architecture: up to 2,000 users

This page describes GitLab reference architecture for up to 2,000 users. For a full list of reference architectures, see Available reference architectures.

• Supported users (approximate): 2,000
• High Availability: False
• Test requests per second (RPS) rates: API: 40 RPS, Web: 4 RPS, Git: 4 RPS

Service	Nodes	Configuration	GCP	AWS	Azure
Load balancer	1	2 vCPU, 1.8GB memory	n1-highcpu-2	c5.large	F2s v2
Object storage	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a	n/a
NFS server (optional, not recommended)	1	4 vCPU, 3.6GB memory	n1-highcpu-4	c5.xlarge	F4s v2
PostgreSQL	1	2 vCPU, 7.5GB memory	n1-standard-2	m5.large	D2s v3
Redis	1	1 vCPU, 3.75GB memory	n1-standard-1	m5.large	D2s v3
Gitaly	1	4 vCPU, 15GB memory	n1-standard-4	m5.xlarge	D4s v3
GitLab Rails	2	8 vCPU, 7.2GB memory	n1-highcpu-8	c5.2xlarge	F8s v2
Monitoring node	1	2 vCPU, 1.8GB memory	n1-highcpu-2	c5.large	F2s v2

The Google Cloud Platform (GCP) architectures were built and tested using the Intel Xeon E5 v3 (Haswell) CPU platform. On different hardware you may find that adjustments, either lower or higher, are required for your CPU or node counts. For more information, see our Sysbench-based CPU benchmark.

AWS-equivalent and Azure-equivalent configurations are rough suggestions that may change in the future, and haven't been tested or validated.

Due to better performance and availability, for data objects (such as LFS, uploads, or artifacts), using an object storage service is recommended instead of using NFS. Using an object storage service also doesn't require you to provision and maintain a node.

Setup components

To set up GitLab and its components to accommodate up to 2,000 users:

1. Configure the external load balancing node to handle the load balancing of the two GitLab application services nodes.
2. Configure the object storage used for shared data objects.
3. Configure NFS (optional, and not recommended) to have shared disk storage service as an alternative to Gitaly or object storage. You can skip this step if you're not using GitLab Pages (which requires NFS).
4. Configure PostgreSQL, the database for GitLab.
5. Configure Redis.
6. Configure Gitaly, which provides access to the Git repositories.
7. Configure the main GitLab Rails application to run Puma/Unicorn, Workhorse, GitLab Shell, and to serve all frontend requests (which include UI, API, and Git over HTTP/SSH).
8. Configure Prometheus to monitor your GitLab environment.

Configure the load balancer

NOTE: Note: This architecture has been tested and validated with HAProxy. Although you can use a load balancer with a similar set of features, GitLab hasn't validated other load balancers.

In an active/active GitLab configuration, you'll need a load balancer to route traffic to the application servers. The specifics for which load balancer to use or its exact configuration is out of scope for the GitLab documentation. If you're managing multi-node systems (including GitLab) you'll probably already have a load balancer of choice. Some examples including HAProxy (open-source), F5 Big-IP LTM, and Citrix Net Scaler. This documentation includes the ports and protocols for use with GitLab.

The next question is how you will handle SSL in your environment. There are several different options:

• The application node terminates SSL.
• The load balancer terminates SSL without backend SSL and communication is not secure between the load balancer and the application node.
• The load balancer terminates SSL with backend SSL and communication is secure between the load balancer and the application node.

Application node terminates SSL

Configure your load balancer to pass connections on port 443 as TCP instead of HTTP(S). This will pass the connection unaltered to the application node's NGINX service, which has the SSL certificate and listens to port 443.

For details about managing SSL certificates and configuring NGINX, see the NGINX HTTPS documentation.

Load balancer terminates SSL without backend SSL

Configure your load balancer to use the HTTP(S) protocol instead of TCP. The load balancer will be responsible for both managing SSL certificates and terminating SSL.

Due to communication between the load balancer and GitLab not being secure, you'll need to complete some additional configuration. For details, see the NGINX proxied SSL documentation.

Load balancer terminates SSL with backend SSL

Configure your load balancers (or single balancer, if you have only one) to use the HTTP(S) protocol rather than TCP. The load balancers will be responsible for the managing SSL certificates for end users.

Traffic will be secure between the load balancers and NGINX in this scenario, and there's no need to add a configuration for proxied SSL. However, you'll need to add a configuration to GitLab to configure SSL certificates. For details about managing SSL certificates and configuring NGINX, see the NGINX HTTPS documentation.

Ports

The basic load balancer ports you should use are described in the following table:

Port	Backend Port	Protocol
80	80	HTTP (1)
443	443	TCP or HTTPS (1) (2)
22	22	TCP

• (1): Web terminal support requires your load balancer to correctly handle WebSocket connections. When using HTTP or HTTPS proxying, your load balancer must be configured to pass through the Connection and Upgrade hop-by-hop headers. For details, see the web terminal integration guide.
• (2): When using the HTTPS protocol for port 443, you'll need to add an SSL certificate to the load balancers. If you need to terminate SSL at the GitLab application server, use the TCP protocol.

If you're using GitLab Pages with custom domain support you will need some additional port configurations. GitLab Pages requires a separate virtual IP address. Configure DNS to point the pages_external_url from /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb to the new virtual IP address. For more information, see the GitLab Pages documentation.

Port	Backend Port	Protocol
80	Varies (1)	HTTP
443	Varies (1)	TCP (2)

• (1): The backend port for GitLab Pages depends on the gitlab_pages['external_http'] and gitlab_pages['external_https'] settings. For details, see the GitLab Pages documentation.
• (2): Port 443 for GitLab Pages must use the TCP protocol. Users can configure custom domains with custom SSL, which wouldn't be possible if SSL was terminated at the load balancer.

Alternate SSH Port

Some organizations have policies against opening SSH port 22. In this case, it may be helpful to configure an alternate SSH hostname that instead allows users to use SSH over port 443. An alternate SSH hostname requires a new virtual IP address compared to the previously described GitLab HTTP configuration.

Configure DNS for an alternate SSH hostname, such as altssh.gitlab.example.com:

LB Port	Backend Port	Protocol
443	22	TCP

Back to setup components

Configure the object storage

GitLab supports using an object storage service for holding several types of data, and is recommended over NFS. In general, object storage services are better for larger environments, as object storage is typically much more performant, reliable, and scalable.

Object storage options that GitLab has either tested or is aware of customers using, includes:

• SaaS/Cloud solutions (such as Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage).
• On-premises hardware and appliances, from various storage vendors.
• MinIO (Deployment guide).

To configure GitLab to use object storage, refer to the following guides based on the features you intend to use:

1. Object storage for backups.
2. Object storage for job artifacts including incremental logging.
3. Object storage for LFS objects.
4. Object storage for uploads.
5. Object storage for merge request diffs.
6. Object storage for Container Registry (optional feature).
7. Object storage for Mattermost (optional feature).
8. Object storage for packages (optional feature). (PREMIUM ONLY)
9. Object storage for Dependency Proxy (optional feature). (PREMIUM ONLY)
10. Object storage for Pseudonymizer (optional feature). (ULTIMATE ONLY)
11. Object storage for autoscale Runner caching (optional, for improved performance).
12. Object storage for Terraform state files.

Using separate buckets for each data type is the recommended approach for GitLab.

A limitation of our configuration is that each use of object storage is separately configured. We have an issue for improving this, which would allow for one bucket with separate folders.

Using a single bucket when GitLab is deployed with the Helm chart causes restoring from a backup to not function properly. Although you may not be using a Helm deployment right now, if you migrate GitLab to a Helm deployment later, GitLab would still work, but you may not realize backups aren't working correctly until a critical requirement for functioning backups is encountered.

Back to setup components

Configure NFS (optional)

For improved performance, object storage, along with Gitaly, are recommended over using NFS whenever possible. However, if you intend to use GitLab Pages, you must use NFS.

For information about configuring NFS, see the NFS documentation page.

Back to setup components

Configure PostgreSQL

In this section, you'll be guided through configuring an external PostgreSQL database to be used with GitLab.

Provide your own PostgreSQL instance

If you're hosting GitLab on a cloud provider, you can optionally use a managed service for PostgreSQL. For example, AWS offers a managed relational database service (RDS) that runs PostgreSQL.

If you use a cloud-managed service, or provide your own PostgreSQL:

1. Set up PostgreSQL according to the database requirements document.
2. Create a gitlab username with a password of your choice. The gitlab user needs privileges to create the gitlabhq_production database.
3. Configure the GitLab application servers with the appropriate details. This step is covered in Configuring the GitLab Rails application.

Standalone PostgreSQL using Omnibus GitLab

1. SSH into the PostgreSQL server.

2. Download/install the Omnibus GitLab package you want using steps 1 and 2 from the GitLab downloads page.

   • Do not complete any other steps on the download page.

3. Generate a password hash for PostgreSQL. This assumes you will use the default username of gitlab (recommended). The command will request a password and confirmation. Use the value that is output by this command in the next step as the value of POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH.

   sudo gitlab-ctl pg-password-md5 gitlab
   

4. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add the contents below, updating placeholder values appropriately.

   • POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH - The value output from the previous step
   • APPLICATION_SERVER_IP_BLOCKS - A space delimited list of IP subnets or IP addresses of the GitLab application servers that will connect to the database. Example: %w(123.123.123.123/32 123.123.123.234/32)

   # Disable all components except PostgreSQL
   roles ['postgres_role']
   repmgr['enable'] = false
   consul['enable'] = false
   prometheus['enable'] = false
   alertmanager['enable'] = false
   pgbouncer_exporter['enable'] = false
   redis_exporter['enable'] = false
   gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
   
   # Set the network addresses that the exporters used for monitoring will listen on
   node_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9100'
   postgres_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9187'
   postgres_exporter['dbname'] = 'gitlabhq_production'
   postgres_exporter['password'] = 'POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH'
   
   # Set the PostgreSQL address and port
   postgresql['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0'
   postgresql['port'] = 5432
   
   # Replace POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH with a generated md5 value
   postgresql['sql_user_password'] = 'POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH'
   
   # Replace APPLICATION_SERVER_IP_BLOCK with the CIDR address of the application node
   postgresql['trust_auth_cidr_addresses'] = %w(127.0.0.1/32 APPLICATION_SERVER_IP_BLOCK)
   
   # Disable automatic database migrations
   gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
   

5. Reconfigure GitLab for the changes to take effect.

6. Note the PostgreSQL node's IP address or hostname, port, and plain text password. These will be necessary when configuring the GitLab application server later.

Advanced configuration options are supported and can be added if needed.

Back to setup components

Configure Redis

In this section, you'll be guided through configuring an external Redis instance to be used with GitLab.

Provide your own Redis instance

Redis version 5.0 or higher is required, as this is what ships with Omnibus GitLab packages starting with GitLab 13.0. Older Redis versions do not support an optional count argument to SPOP which is now required for Merge Trains.

In addition, GitLab makes use of certain commands like UNLINK and USAGE which were introduced only in Redis 4.

Managed Redis from cloud providers such as AWS ElastiCache will work. If these services support high availability, be sure it is not the Redis Cluster type.

Note the Redis node's IP address or hostname, port, and password (if required). These will be necessary when configuring the GitLab application servers later.

Standalone Redis using Omnibus GitLab

The Omnibus GitLab package can be used to configure a standalone Redis server. The steps below are the minimum necessary to configure a Redis server with Omnibus:

1. SSH into the Redis server.

2. Download/install the Omnibus GitLab package you want using steps 1 and 2 from the GitLab downloads page.

   • Do not complete any other steps on the download page.

3. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add the contents:

   ## Enable Redis
   redis['enable'] = true
   
   ## Disable all other services
   sidekiq['enable'] = false
   gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
   puma['enable'] = false
   unicorn['enable'] = false
   postgresql['enable'] = false
   nginx['enable'] = false
   prometheus['enable'] = false
   alertmanager['enable'] = false
   pgbouncer_exporter['enable'] = false
   gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
   gitaly['enable'] = false
   grafana['enable'] = false
   
   redis['bind'] = '0.0.0.0'
   redis['port'] = 6379
   redis['password'] = 'SECRET_PASSWORD_HERE'
   
   gitlab_rails['enable'] = false
   
   # Set the network addresses that the exporters used for monitoring will listen on
   node_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9100'
   redis_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9121'
   redis_exporter['flags'] = {
         'redis.addr' => 'redis://0.0.0.0:6379',
         'redis.password' => 'SECRET_PASSWORD_HERE',
   }
   

4. Reconfigure Omnibus GitLab for the changes to take effect.

5. Note the Redis node's IP address or hostname, port, and Redis password. These will be necessary when configuring the GitLab application servers later.

Advanced configuration options are supported and can be added if needed.

Back to setup components

Configure Gitaly

Deploying Gitaly in its own server can benefit GitLab installations that are larger than a single machine. Gitaly node requirements are dependent on data, specifically the number of projects and their sizes. It's recommended that each Gitaly node store no more than 5TB of data. Your 2K setup may require one or more nodes depending on your repository storage requirements.

We strongly recommend that all Gitaly nodes should be set up with SSD disks with a throughput of at least 8,000 IOPS for read operations and 2,000 IOPS for write, as Gitaly has heavy I/O. These IOPS values are recommended only as a starter as with time they may be adjusted higher or lower depending on the scale of your environment's workload. If you're running the environment on a Cloud provider you may need to refer to their documentation on how configure IOPS correctly.

Some things to note:

• The GitLab Rails application shards repositories into repository storages.
• A Gitaly server can host one or more storages.
• A GitLab server can use one or more Gitaly servers.
• Gitaly addresses must be specified in such a way that they resolve correctly for ALL Gitaly clients.
• Gitaly servers must not be exposed to the public internet, as Gitaly's network traffic is unencrypted by default. The use of a firewall is highly recommended to restrict access to the Gitaly server. Another option is to use TLS.

TIP: Tip: For more information about Gitaly's history and network architecture see the standalone Gitaly documentation.

Note: Note: The token referred to throughout the Gitaly documentation is just an arbitrary password selected by the administrator. It is unrelated to tokens created for the GitLab API or other similar web API tokens.

Below we describe how to configure one Gitaly server gitaly1.internal with secret token gitalysecret. We assume your GitLab installation has two repository storages: default and storage1.

To configure the Gitaly server:

1. Download/Install the Omnibus GitLab package you want using steps 1 and 2 from the GitLab downloads page but without providing the EXTERNAL_URL value.

2. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb to configure storage paths, enable the network listener and configure the token:

   # /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb
   
   # Gitaly and GitLab use two shared secrets for authentication, one to authenticate gRPC requests
   # to Gitaly, and a second for authentication callbacks from GitLab-Shell to the GitLab internal API.
   # The following two values must be the same as their respective values
   # of the GitLab Rails application setup
   gitaly['auth_token'] = 'gitlaysecret'
   gitlab_shell['secret_token'] = 'shellsecret'
   
   # Avoid running unnecessary services on the Gitaly server
   postgresql['enable'] = false
   redis['enable'] = false
   nginx['enable'] = false
   puma['enable'] = false
   unicorn['enable'] = false
   sidekiq['enable'] = false
   gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
   grafana['enable'] = false
   
   # If you run a seperate monitoring node you can disable these services
   alertmanager['enable'] = false
   prometheus['enable'] = false
   
   # Prevent database connections during 'gitlab-ctl reconfigure'
   gitlab_rails['rake_cache_clear'] = false
   gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
   
   # Configure the gitlab-shell API callback URL. Without this, `git push` will
   # fail. This can be your 'front door' GitLab URL or an internal load
   # balancer.
   # Don't forget to copy `/etc/gitlab/gitlab-secrets.json` from web server to Gitaly server.
   gitlab_rails['internal_api_url'] = 'https://gitlab.example.com'
   
   # Make Gitaly accept connections on all network interfaces. You must use
   # firewalls to restrict access to this address/port.
   # Comment out following line if you only want to support TLS connections
   gitaly['listen_addr'] = "0.0.0.0:8075"
   gitaly['prometheus_listen_addr'] = "0.0.0.0:9236"
   
   # Set the network addresses that the exporters used for monitoring will listen on
   node_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9100'
   

3. Append the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb on gitaly1.internal:

   git_data_dirs({
     'default' => {
       'path' => '/var/opt/gitlab/git-data'
     },
     'storage1' => {
       'path' => '/mnt/gitlab/git-data'
     },
   })
   

4. Save the file and reconfigure GitLab.

5. Confirm that Gitaly can perform callbacks to the internal API:

   sudo /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-shell/bin/check -config /opt/gitlab/embedded/service/gitlab-shell/config.yml
   

Gitaly TLS support

Gitaly supports TLS encryption. To be able to communicate with a Gitaly instance that listens for secure connections you will need to use tls:// URL scheme in the gitaly_address of the corresponding storage entry in the GitLab configuration.

You will need to bring your own certificates as this isn't provided automatically. The certificate, or its certificate authority, must be installed on all Gitaly nodes (including the Gitaly node using the certificate) and on all client nodes that communicate with it following the procedure described in GitLab custom certificate configuration.

NOTE: Note The self-signed certificate must specify the address you use to access the Gitaly server. If you are addressing the Gitaly server by a hostname, you can either use the Common Name field for this, or add it as a Subject Alternative Name. If you are addressing the Gitaly server by its IP address, you must add it as a Subject Alternative Name to the certificate. gRPC does not support using an IP address as Common Name in a certificate.

NOTE: Note: It is possible to configure Gitaly servers with both an unencrypted listening address listen_addr and an encrypted listening address tls_listen_addr at the same time. This allows you to do a gradual transition from unencrypted to encrypted traffic, if necessary.

To configure Gitaly with TLS:

1. Create the /etc/gitlab/ssl directory and copy your key and certificate there:

   sudo mkdir -p /etc/gitlab/ssl
   sudo chmod 755 /etc/gitlab/ssl
   sudo cp key.pem cert.pem /etc/gitlab/ssl/
   sudo chmod 644 key.pem cert.pem
   

2. Copy the cert to /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs so Gitaly will trust the cert when calling into itself:

   sudo cp /etc/gitlab/ssl/cert.pem /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs/
   

3. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add:

   gitaly['tls_listen_addr'] = "0.0.0.0:9999"
   gitaly['certificate_path'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/cert.pem"
   gitaly['key_path'] = "/etc/gitlab/ssl/key.pem"
   

4. Delete gitaly['listen_addr'] to allow only encrypted connections.

5. Save the file and reconfigure GitLab.

Back to setup components

Configure GitLab Rails

NOTE: Note: In our architectures we run each GitLab Rails node using the Puma webserver and have its number of workers set to 90% of available CPUs along with four threads. For nodes that are running Rails with other components the worker value should be reduced accordingly where we've found 50% achieves a good balance but this is dependent on workload.

This section describes how to configure the GitLab application (Rails) component. On each node perform the following:

1. If you're using NFS:

   1. If necessary, install the NFS client utility packages using the following commands:

      # Ubuntu/Debian
      apt-get install nfs-common
      
      # CentOS/Red Hat
      yum install nfs-utils nfs-utils-lib
      

   2. Specify the necessary NFS mounts in /etc/fstab. The exact contents of /etc/fstab will depend on how you chose to configure your NFS server. See the NFS documentation for examples and the various options.

   3. Create the shared directories. These may be different depending on your NFS mount locations.

      mkdir -p /var/opt/gitlab/.ssh /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/uploads /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-rails/shared /var/opt/gitlab/gitlab-ci/builds /var/opt/gitlab/git-data
      

2. Download/install Omnibus GitLab using steps 1 and 2 from GitLab downloads. Do not complete other steps on the download page.

3. Create/edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and use the following configuration. To maintain uniformity of links across nodes, the external_url on the application server should point to the external URL that users will use to access GitLab. This would be the URL of the load balancer which will route traffic to the GitLab application server:

   external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'
   
   # Gitaly and GitLab use two shared secrets for authentication, one to authenticate gRPC requests
   # to Gitaly, and a second for authentication callbacks from GitLab-Shell to the GitLab internal API.
   # The following two values must be the same as their respective values
   # of the Gitaly setup
   gitlab_rails['gitaly_token'] = 'gitalyecret'
   gitlab_shell['secret_token'] = 'shellsecret'
   
   git_data_dirs({
     'default' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tcp://gitaly1.internal:8075' },
     'storage1' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tcp://gitaly1.internal:8075' },
     'storage2' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tcp://gitaly2.internal:8075' },
   })
   
   ## Disable components that will not be on the GitLab application server
   roles ['application_role']
   gitaly['enable'] = false
   nginx['enable'] = true
   
   ## PostgreSQL connection details
   gitlab_rails['db_adapter'] = 'postgresql'
   gitlab_rails['db_encoding'] = 'unicode'
   gitlab_rails['db_host'] = '10.1.0.5' # IP/hostname of database server
   gitlab_rails['db_password'] = 'DB password'
   
   ## Redis connection details
   gitlab_rails['redis_port'] = '6379'
   gitlab_rails['redis_host'] = '10.1.0.6' # IP/hostname of Redis server
   gitlab_rails['redis_password'] = 'Redis Password'
   
   # Set the network addresses that the exporters used for monitoring will listen on
   node_exporter['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9100'
   gitlab_workhorse['prometheus_listen_addr'] = '0.0.0.0:9229'
   sidekiq['listen_address'] = "0.0.0.0"
   puma['listen'] = '0.0.0.0'
   
   # Add the monitoring node's IP address to the monitoring whitelist and allow it to
   # scrape the NGINX metrics. Replace placeholder `monitoring.gitlab.example.com` with
   # the address and/or subnets gathered from the monitoring node
   gitlab_rails['monitoring_whitelist'] = ['<MONITOR NODE IP>/32', '127.0.0.0/8']
   nginx['status']['options']['allow'] = ['<MONITOR NODE IP>/32', '127.0.0.0/8']
   
   ## Uncomment and edit the following options if you have set up NFS
   ##
   ## Prevent GitLab from starting if NFS data mounts are not available
   ##
   #high_availability['mountpoint'] = '/var/opt/gitlab/git-data'
   ##
   ## Ensure UIDs and GIDs match between servers for permissions via NFS
   ##
   #user['uid'] = 9000
   #user['gid'] = 9000
   #web_server['uid'] = 9001
   #web_server['gid'] = 9001
   #registry['uid'] = 9002
   #registry['gid'] = 9002
   

4. If you're using Gitaly with TLS support, make sure the git_data_dirs entry is configured with tls instead of tcp:

   git_data_dirs({
     'default' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tls://gitaly1.internal:9999' },
     'storage1' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tls://gitaly1.internal:9999' },
     'storage2' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tls://gitaly2.internal:9999' },
   })
   

   1. Copy the cert into /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs:

      sudo cp cert.pem /etc/gitlab/trusted-certs/
      

5. Save the file and reconfigure GitLab.

6. Run sudo gitlab-rake gitlab:gitaly:check to confirm the node can connect to Gitaly.

7. Tail the logs to see the requests:

   sudo gitlab-ctl tail gitaly
   

NOTE: Note: When you specify https in the external_url, as in the example above, GitLab assumes you have SSL certificates in /etc/gitlab/ssl/. If certificates are not present, NGINX will fail to start. See the NGINX documentation for more information.

Back to setup components

Configure Prometheus

The Omnibus GitLab package can be used to configure a standalone Monitoring node running Prometheus and Grafana:

1. SSH into the Monitoring node.

2. Download/install the Omnibus GitLab package you want using steps 1 and 2 from the GitLab downloads page. Do not complete any other steps on the download page.

3. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add the contents:

   external_url 'http://gitlab.example.com'
   
   # Enable Prometheus
   prometheus['enable'] = true
   prometheus['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0:9090'
   prometheus['monitor_kubernetes'] = false
   
   # Enable Login form
   grafana['disable_login_form'] = false
   
   # Enable Grafana
   grafana['enable'] = true
   grafana['admin_password'] = 'toomanysecrets'
   
   # Disable all other services
   gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
   alertmanager['enable'] = false
   gitaly['enable'] = false
   gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
   gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
   nginx['enable'] = true
   postgres_exporter['enable'] = false
   postgresql['enable'] = false
   redis['enable'] = false
   redis_exporter['enable'] = false
   sidekiq['enable'] = false
   puma['enable'] = false
   unicorn['enable'] = false
   node_exporter['enable'] = false
   gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
   

4. Prometheus also needs some scrape configs to pull all the data from the various nodes where we configured exporters. Assuming that your nodes' IPs are:

   1.1.1.1: postgres
   1.1.1.2: redis
   1.1.1.3: gitaly1
   1.1.1.4: rails1
   1.1.1.5: rails2
   

   Add the following to /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

   prometheus['scrape_configs'] = [
     {
        'job_name': 'postgres',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.1:9187'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'redis',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.2:9121'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'gitaly',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.3:9236'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'gitlab-nginx',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.4:8060', '1.1.1.5:8060'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'gitlab-workhorse',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.4:9229', '1.1.1.5:9229'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'gitlab-rails',
        'metrics_path': '/-/metrics',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.4:8080', '1.1.1.5:8080'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'gitlab-sidekiq',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.4:8082', '1.1.1.5:8082'],
        ],
     },
     {
        'job_name': 'node',
        'static_configs' => [
        'targets' => ['1.1.1.1:9100', '1.1.1.2:9100', '1.1.1.3:9100', '1.1.1.4:9100', '1.1.1.5:9100'],
        ],
     },
   ]
   

5. Save the file and reconfigure GitLab.

6. In the GitLab UI, set admin/application_settings/metrics_and_profiling > Metrics - Grafana to /-/grafana to http[s]://<MONITOR NODE>/-/grafana

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Troubleshooting

See the troubleshooting documentation.

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