Explore ARM recommendations for the Reference Architectures
Looking long term it's been suggested we may need to look at Arm recommendations for the Reference Architectures.
Still relatively new in this space with only AWS offering them as an option so this is more of a medium to long term task but worth calling out now.
Update (2022/08/02)
GCP now has ARM processors in beta.
For this task in particular in terms of the Reference Architectures all we need to do here is validate ARM performs better than our lower common denominator and it would then be recommendable - AWS has already been tested and we're waiting on access from GCP. In other words we can treat it like newer x86 processors (but the company might need to explore a regular functional test to make sure the packages keep working).
There's still several challenges though worth noting:
- Cloud Native Hybrid support is still in progress.
- ARM VMs have notably less availability and machine sizes, e.g. GCP doesn't have a 64 core machine.
With the above said I think the following lists of tasks (and subsequent action) is what's needed to see this out:
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Explore if any regular functional testing is being or will be done on GitLab ARM packages / containers. -
Performance test Omnibus arch on AWS (results) -
Performance test Omnibus arch on GCP. -
Once both are done add a note to the RA docs calling out equivalent ARM machines are supported for Omnibus arch (unless machine sizes aren't translatable).
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Performance tests CNH arch on AWS. -
Performance tests CNH arch on GCP. -
Once both are done add a note to the RA docs calling out equivalent ARM machines are supported for CNH arch (unless machine sizes aren't translatable).
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