Deployments based on users timezones
Description
Today there was the deployment of the new GitLab EE 9.5 version. During the upgrade, that took a very long time, the service was not very predictable. Personally I had some issues with CI and timeouts while trying to push. Some time after the deployment CI suddenly started working again.
There is a deployment notice and there is also an announcement some time before it actually happens. During the deployment this message stays on the site and is broadcasted on git communication as well (with a push for example). The time displayed is UTC and I had to do a translation to my own timezone myself. Also, the deployment was during our "office" hours which is not very convenient if things are not working very well.
This is not a really clear "product" feature to describe for me as a user. So my apologies upfront that I did not fill in all the fields below. I would be happy to elaborate more if requested.
Proposals
I have two:
- As a user I would like the time shown as start of the deployment as easy as possible to understand in my own timezone
- As a user I would like that the deployment of a new version means minimal to no impact
For the last one my suggestion is to make it possible to do deployments based on regions so that a deployment could be scheduled to a more convenient time (like, after "normal" business hours)?
Links / references
I got inspiration from the issue below which I actualy got from a question that I asked on twitter to @gitlab.