GitLab.com GCP Migration Blog Post
As the GCP Migration switchover date approaches, we need to start preparing the communications we will need to make to our users and the broader GitLab community..
The earliest possible date we will conduct the switch is the 23rd of June 2018. However, it may slip back further depending on how many issues we encounter with the Geo Transfer, the new environment, etc.
Some notes:
- The full failover procedure is documented here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/migration/blob/master/.gitlab/issue_templates/failover.md
- We expect a 2 hour downtime, although we will stop accepting new CI jobs an hour in advance of that
- Any CI jobs that start before the CI maintenance window but complete during the window will lose their artifacts. These will need to have run for over an hour on a Saturday morning.
- We expect the switchover to occur morning time Central European Time (~8am - ~10am). We've chosen a Saturday as it's the weekend in most countries (whereas Sunday is not) and it's when we see the least traffic on GitLab.com
- Should we email our users one week in advance or two weeks in advance?
- Likewise, should the blog post be published one week in advance or two?
- We've been using the terminology of failover, but, from a marketing point of view, I'm not sure if we should be using "fail" in the name of what we're doing. Hence me using (in this issue), switchover.
- I expect the blog and email should cover our backup policies,
- Users should expect to have to re-authenticate for GitLab.com web access after the switchover, as authentication cookies will be invalidated
Edited by Andreas Kämmerle