2026-01-22: Rollout Ruby 3.3 to Production

Production Change

Change Summary

Note

This is the second attempt, after the first one was aborted #20969 (closed)

Following up from the test rollout in staging environments, the plan is to rollout Ruby 3.3 to production.

During the change duration, auto-deploys will need to be paused.

Change Details

  1. Services Impacted - GitLab Rails, Sidekiq, and any other service that uses Ruby
  2. Change Technician - @jennykim-gitlab @dat.tang.gitlab
  3. Change Reviewer - @skarbek
  4. Scheduled Date and Time (UTC in format YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM) - 2026-01-22 12:00
  5. Time tracking - 480 minutes
  6. Downtime Component - none

Set Maintenance Mode in GitLab

No need for setting Maintenance mode.

Preparation

Note

The following checklists must be done in advance, before setting the label changescheduled

Change Reviewer checklist

C4 C3 C2 C1:

  • Check if the following applies:
    • The scheduled day and time of execution of the change is appropriate.
    • The change plan is technically accurate.
    • The change plan includes estimated timing values based on previous testing.
    • The change plan includes a viable rollback plan.
    • The specified metrics/monitoring dashboards provide sufficient visibility for the change.

C2 C1:

  • Check if the following applies:
    • The complexity of the plan is appropriate for the corresponding risk of the change. (i.e. the plan contains clear details).
    • The change plan includes success measures for all steps/milestones during the execution.
    • The change adequately minimizes risk within the environment/service.
    • The performance implications of executing the change are well-understood and documented.
    • The specified metrics/monitoring dashboards provide sufficient visibility for the change.
      • If not, is it possible (or necessary) to make changes to observability platforms for added visibility?
    • The change has a primary and secondary SRE with knowledge of the details available during the change window.
    • The change window has been agreed with Release Managers in advance of the change. If the change is planned for APAC hours, this issue has an agreed pre-change approval.
    • The labels blocks deployments and/or blocks feature-flags are applied as necessary.

Change Technician checklist

  • The Change Criticality has been set appropriately and requirements have been reviewed.
  • The change plan is technically accurate.
  • The rollback plan is technically accurate and detailed enough to be executed by anyone with access.
  • This Change Issue is linked to the appropriate Issue and/or Epic
  • Change has been tested in staging and results noted in a comment on this issue.
  • A dry-run has been conducted and results noted in a comment on this issue.
  • The change execution window respects the Production Change Lock periods.
  • Once all boxes above are checked, mark the change request as scheduled: /label ~"change::scheduled"
  • For C1 and C2 change issues, the change event is added to the GitLab Production calendar by the change-scheduler bot. It is schedule to run every 2 hours.
  • ~~For C1 change issues, a Senior Infrastructure Manager has provided approval with the manager_approved label on the issue.~~
  • For C2 change issues, an Infrastructure Manager provided approval with the manager_approved label on the issue.
  • For C1 and C2 changes, mention @gitlab-org/saas-platforms/inframanagers in this issue to provide visibility to all infrastructure managers.
  • For C1, C2, or blocks deployments change issues, confirm with Release managers that the change does not overlap or hinder any release process (In #production channel, mention @release-managers and this issue and await their acknowledgment.)
    • Mention that no PDM should be run on the day of the CR

Detailed steps for the change

Pre-execution steps

Note

The following steps should be done right at the scheduled time of the change request. The preparation steps are listed below.

  • Make sure all tasks in Change Technician checklist are done
  • For C1 and C2 change issues, the SRE on-call has been informed prior to change being rolled out.
    • The SRE on-call provided approval with the eoc_approved label on the issue.
  • For C1, C2, or blocks deployments change issues, Release managers have been informed prior to change being rolled out. (In #production channel, mention @release-managers and this issue and await their acknowledgment.)
    • Mention that no PDM should be run on the day of the CR
  • There are currently no active incidents that are severity1 or severity2
  • If the change involves doing maintenance on a database host, an appropriate silence targeting the host(s) should be added for the duration of the change.

Change Steps - steps to take to execute the change

  • No PDM should be run on the day of the CR
  • Note the last deployment package that was successfully deployed to production in the Rollback section.
  • Open a MR to update README with the new ruby version: gitlab-org/gitlab!218245 (merged)

Estimated Time to Complete (mins) - 480 minutes (8 hours)

Pause auto deploys

  • Pause auto deploys: /chatops run auto_deploy pause
  • Pause auto build: /chatops run auto_build pause

Prepare a Ruby 3.3 package

Start a deployment pipeline

  • Trigger a build pipeline by running the "auto_build: Create new package" inactive manual scheduled pipeline: https://ops.gitlab.net/gitlab-org/release/tools/-/pipeline_schedules/
  • Make sure new build pipelines have started.
  • Verify that the Omnibus package contains Ruby 3.3.

    • Find out the image reference of the Docker job in the Omnibus packager pipeline. You can search for the string Copying image in the logs for that (under the collapsible section docker-push-staging) - docker run -it dev.gitlab.org:5005/gitlab/omnibus-gitlab/gitlab-ee:<image-tag> ruby --version

      ╰─ docker run -it dev.gitlab.org:5005/gitlab/omnibus-gitlab/gitlab-ee:18.9.202601221307-3640a66f21b.6453831a365-arm64 ruby --version
Trying to pull dev.gitlab.org:5005/gitlab/omnibus-gitlab/gitlab-ee:18.9.202601221307-3640a66f21b.6453831a365-arm64...
Getting image source signatures
...
Writing manifest to image destination
ruby 3.3.10 (2025-10-23 revision 343ea05002) [aarch64-linux]
  • Verify that the CNG image contains Ruby 3.3.

    • Run the following command locally to know the bundled Ruby version - docker run -it dev.gitlab.org:5005/gitlab/charts/components/images/gitlab-webservice-ee:<IMAGE_REFERENCE> -- ruby --version

      ╰─ docker run -it dev.gitlab.org:5005/gitlab/charts/components/images/gitlab-webservice-ee:18-9-202601221307-3640a66f21b -- ruby --version
...
Writing manifest to image destination
WARNING: image platform (linux/amd64) does not match the expected platform (linux/arm64)
Begin parsing .erb templates from /srv/gitlab/config
Begin parsing .tpl templates from /srv/gitlab/config
ruby 3.3.10 (2025-10-23 revision 343ea05002) [x86_64-linux]

Deploy the Ruby 3.3 Package

  • Start a new deployment pipeline for the above package with /chatops run auto_deploy pipeline 18.9.202601221307-3640a66f21b.6453831a365
  • Ping monitoring engineers and @release-managers on #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to gstg-cny.
  • Make sure Quality smoke and reliable pipelines on gstg-cny have passed. If there are failures, ask the Quality on-call to have a look to determine if the failures are related to the Ruby 3.3 rollout.
  • Let deployment continue upto gprd-cny.
  • Ping monitoring engineers and @release-managers on #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to gprd-cny.
  • Make sure Quality smoke and reliable pipelines on gprd-cny have passed. If there are failures, ask the Quality on-call to have a look to determine if the failures are related to the Ruby 3.3 rollout.
  • Promote the package to gstg once the monitoring engineers give green light.
  • Keep an eye for any gprd deployment jobs and cancel them.
  • Ping monitoring engineers and @release-managers on #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to gstg.
Deploy to Production

We will manually deploy to the zonal clusters manually, then the regional cluster. Bake to account for monitoring time in-between each cluster.

Zonal cluster b
  • Manually run gprd-us-east1-b:auto-deploy
  • Ping monitoring engineers and @release-managers on #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to the zonal cluster gprd-us-east1-b.
  • Bake for 30 minutes, or until engineers give green light.
Zonal cluster c
  • Manually run gprd-us-east1-c:auto-deploy
  • Ping monitoring engineers and @release-managers on #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to the zonal cluster gprd-us-east1-c.
  • Bake for 30 minutes, or until engineers give green light.
Zonal cluster d
  • Manually run gprd-us-east1-d:auto-deploy
  • Ping monitoring engineers #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when package is deployed to the zonal cluster gprd-us-east1-d.
  • Bake for 15 minutes, or until engineers give green light.
Regional cluster
  • Manually run gprd:auto-deploy
  • Inform the @sre-on-call and @release-managers in #production on Slack and the monitoring engineers in the #f_ruby3 channel in Slack when the package is deployed to gprd.
Post-deploy

Unpause auto deploys

  • /chatops run auto_deploy unpause
  • /chatops run auto_build unpause
  • Set label changecomplete /label ~change::complete

Rollback

Last Ruby 3.2 package that was successfully deployed to production

18.9.202601220506-8c59070ce5b.927dc39fcfc

Rollback steps - steps to be taken in the event of a need to rollback this change

Estimated Time to Complete (mins) - 60 minutes

  • Inform #engineering-fyi :

    The Ruby 3.3 rollout was aborted due to <reason>. It will be rescheduled for the near future.

Rollback production-canary only

If you have not promoted to production and need to rollback production-canary, follow the following steps:

Rollback production and staging

If we need to rollback production and staging, follow the steps in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release/docs/-/blob/master/runbooks/rollback-a-deployment.md to rollback to a Ruby 3.2 package. The steps are reproduced here as well:

  • /chatops run rollback check gprd
  • Notify @sre-on-call, @release-managers in #production that a rollback is about to be started. Make sure they know that Canary will also be drained.
  • /chatops run canary --disable --production
  • /chatops run deploy <PACKAGE NAME> gprd --rollback
  • /chatops run rollback check gstg
  • Notify @sre-on-call, @release-managers in #staging that a rollback is about to be started. Make sure they know that Canary will also be drained.
  • /chatops run canary --disable --staging
  • /chatops run deploy <PACKAGE NAME> gstg --rollback

Make sure that the next auto deploy package will be built with Ruby 3.2

Monitoring

Key metrics to observe

Edited by Jenny Kim