What we learned after a year of GitLab.com on Kubernetes

Over the past year, GitLab's infrastructure department has been migrating services on GitLab.com to Kubernetes to enhance scaling, deployments, and resource efficiency, transitioning from the previous virtual machine-based system managed by Chef. This migration, which began planning in 2019, involves overcoming challenges like managing a hybrid deployment, network storage dependencies, and resource utilization issues. The transition has been carefully managed using a single regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster with segmented node pools and a focus on observability, ensuring that workloads are monitored against service-level objectives (SLOs). The migration strategy involves using a canary stage to gradually shift traffic to the new infrastructure, allowing rollback if necessary, and employing reserved pod capacity to manage workload spikes effectively. This approach has resulted in faster and safer deployments, benefiting both GitLab.com and self-managed customers using the GitLab Helm chart. The ongoing migration efforts and lessons learned, such as managing cross-availability zone network charges and improving pod start times, are documented for transparency and to aid future migrations.

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