[Feature flag] Rollout of `ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors`

Summary

This issue is to rollout Reduce cost factor for community contributors o... (#365447 - closed) on production, that is currently behind the ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors feature flag.

Owners

Stakeholders

Expectations

What are we expecting to happen?

When the feature flag is enabled we should expect merge request pipelines from Community contribution to gitlab-org and gitlab-com projects to receive a low cost factor that enables contributors to use up to 300,000 minutes of shared runners. This quantity should make contributors to comfortably run enough pipelines throughout the month.

We are also logging contributions in Kibana so we should expect the following logs to appear:

Gitlab::AppLogger.info(
  message: "GitLab contributor cost factor granted",
  cost_factor: gitlab_contribution_cost_factor,
  project_path: @build.project.full_path,
  pipeline_id: @build.pipeline_id)

This feature flag should not affect contributions from forks targeting projects outside gitlab-org or gitlab-com groups or any other public projects.

When is the feature viable?

As soon as Use a minimal cost factor for GitLab forks (!89742 - merged) is merged.

What might happen if this goes wrong?

We need to ensure that the expected behavior is happening and that we are not granting a low cost factor to pipelines outside the defined condition. For example:

  • pipelines not from forks
  • pipelines from other forks not targeting GitLab projects
  • non merge request pipelines

Note that we currently have an open bug https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/issues/364282 where CI minutes consumption is not accumulated in specific scenarios described in the issue.

What can we monitor to detect problems with this?

  • Sentry errors
  • Track errors and performance of PUT /jobs/:id runner endpoint - ensure no errors occur and no performance degradation
  • Track errors and performance of PATCH /jobs/:id/trace runner endpoint - ensure no errors occur and no performance degradation

What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?

Same as above.

Rollout Steps

Rollout on non-production environments

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments.
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status 906c4fd0b54b4feaf2d69149bb7113ed50ada1c4
  • Enable the feature globally on non-production environments.
    • /chatops run feature set ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors true --dev --staging
  • Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Note you will need to make sure you are configured to use canary as outlined here when accessing the staging environment in order to make sure you are testing appropriately.

Specific rollout on production

  • Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary.
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status 906c4fd0b54b4feaf2d69149bb7113ed50ada1c4
  • If you're using project-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
    • /chatops run feature set --project=gitlab-org/gitlab,gitlab-org/gitlab-foss,gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors true
    • /chatops run feature set --namespace=gitlab-org,gitlab-com ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_namespaces true
  • Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.

Preparation before global rollout

  • Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall Slack alias.
  • Announce on the feature issue an estimated time this will be enabled on GitLab.com.
  • Notify #support_gitlab-com and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).

Global rollout on production

For visibility, all /chatops commands that target production should be executed in the #production slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_TEAM_NAME).

  • Incrementally roll out the feature.
    • If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
      • /chatops run feature set ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors 25 --actors
    • If the feature flag in code does NOT have an actor, perform time-based rollout (random rollout).
      • /chatops run feature set ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors true
  • Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled.
  • Wait for at least one day for the verification term.

Release the feature

After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.

You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.

  • Create a merge request to remove ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors feature flag. Ask for review and merge it.

  • Ensure that the cleanup MR has been included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post.

    • /chatops run release check https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/89742 <milestone>

  • Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone.

  • If not already done, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production channel:

    • /chatops run auto_deploy status b5058709
    • /chatops run feature delete ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors --dev --staging
    • /chatops run auto_deploy status b5058709
    • /chatops run feature delete ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors --production

  • Close this rollout issue.

Rollback Steps

  • This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set ci_minimal_cost_factor_for_gitlab_contributors false
Edited by Allison Browne