How GitLab uses Unicorn and unicorn-worker-killer

GitLab utilizes Unicorn, a pre-forking Ruby web server, to manage web requests for both its Community and Enterprise Editions, leveraging its multi-process architecture to optimize CPU usage and enhance fault tolerance. The Unicorn 'master' process initiates a clean Ruby environment and spawns worker processes to handle requests, replacing any that crash or time out, ensuring uninterrupted service. To manage memory leaks inherent in long-running processes, GitLab employs the unicorn-worker-killer gem, which performs memory checks on Unicorn workers after every 16 requests, terminating and replacing those that exceed a set memory limit without dropping user requests. This approach, while resulting in frequent worker restarts, particularly on some GitLab sites, is designed to maintain service reliability and prevent memory leaks from impacting user experience.

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