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Update monthly template to add tasks to execute post-deploy pipeline

Reuben Pereira requested to merge rp/update-monthly-template-for-pdm-pipeline into master

What does this MR do and why?

Describe in detail what your merge request does and why.

Monthly template

Release 15.1

First steps

  • Change #f_upcoming_release topic with /topic 15.1.0: <link_to_this_issue>
  • Adjust the auto-deploy branch schedule based on the Release Manager's working hours. Adjust if needed and make sure any changes are updated in the handbook.
  • Consider planned PCLs and modify the dates below to accurately reflect the plan of action.
  • If there is a Family & Friends day this month, add notes for pausing deployments before the day starts, and unpausing them before the next business day. See the documentation.
  • Update this issue with three planned dates for recurring Staging rollback practice. Consider spreading these across timezones to share the knowledge.
    • Set Due Date for this Issue to the first practice session
  • Check for any deprecations and see if we are possibly affected in our k8s or chef config. with removal: '15.1' that might affect our configuration - otherwise the next auto-deploy after a monthly release might fail with a deprecation failure

First Staging Rollback Practice

Date to be Completed:

Second Staging Rollback Practice

Date to be Completed:

Third Staging Rollback Practice

Date to be Completed:

Up until the 17th

  • Ensure any deploys that do not make it to canary are investigated. Disable canary if necessary.
  • Push any successful deploy to canary into production after some time has passed (preferably 1h).
  • Should any deployment blockers prevent automatic promotions to production, this requires approval by the SRE On-Call.
    1. Ask for permission to promote the release in #production - provide the necessary context to the Engineer
    2. If permission is granted, utilize the following command to initiate an overridden promotion:
    /chatops run deploy <VERSION> gprd --ignore-production-checks 'deployment approved by on call SRE'
    1. This will post a comment into this issue and begin the deployment
    2. Ask the SRE On-Call to respond to the comment with their approval for auditing purposes

17th

If this date is on a weekend, do this work on the next working day

  • Find the latest sha that made it into production successfully: sha
  • Make sure to execute the post-deploy migration pipeline to ensure that all post-deploy migrations have been executed: /chatops run post_deploy_migrations execute.
  • Notify Engineering Managers and developers that this is the sha that is guaranteed to be released on the 22nd: 
    /chatops run notify ":mega: This is the most recent commit running on GitLab.com and this is guaranteed to be released on the 22nd.
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security/gitlab/commits/<SHA>.
You can check if an MR made the cut by using the following ChatOps command: `/chatops run release check [MR_URL] 15.1`
Please see the following documentation on what this means:
  * `https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/releases/#how-can-i-determine-if-my-merge-request-will-make-it-into-the-monthly-release`
  * `https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/releases/#when-do-i-need-to-have-my-mr-merged-in-order-for-it-to-be-included-into-the-monthly-release`
  * Documentation about `release check` chatops command: `https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release/docs/-/blob/master/general/deploy/auto-deploy.md#status-of-a-merged-mr-with-respect-to-monthly-releases`"

18th

If this date is on a weekend, do this work on the last Friday before the 18th.

  • Log latest auto-deploy branch: BRANCH_NAME
  • Ensure this build makes it through into production
  • Make sure to execute the post-deploy migration pipeline to ensure that all post-deploy migrations have been executed: /chatops run post_deploy_migrations execute.
  • Grab the sha from this new auto-deploy branch and notify Engineering Managers and developers that this is the candidate sha for the release: 
    /chatops run notify ":mega: This is the _candidate_ commit to be released on the 22nd.
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security/gitlab/commits/<SHA>
You can check if an MR made the cut by using the following ChatOps command: `/chatops run release check [MR_URL] 15.1`
Further deployments may result in the final commit being different from the candidate. Please see the following documentation on what this means:
  * `https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/releases/#how-can-i-determine-if-my-merge-request-will-make-it-into-the-monthly-release`
  * `https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/releases/#when-do-i-need-to-have-my-mr-merged-in-order-for-it-to-be-included-into-the-monthly-release`
  * Documentation about `release check` chatops command: `https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release/docs/-/blob/master/general/deploy/auto-deploy.md#status-of-a-merged-mr-with-respect-to-monthly-releases`"

20th: two working days before the release

If this date is on a Sunday, do this work on the last Friday before the 20th. If it falls on a Friday or Saturday, move it to Thursday.

  • Determine what is the last auto deploy branch to have deployed to production and add it here: BRANCH

  • If you plan to use the latest commit deployed to production to create the RC, make sure to execute the post-deploy migration pipeline to ensure that all post-deploy migrations have been executed: /chatops run post_deploy_migrations execute.

  • Create a RC version to ensure that the final version builds correctly

    # In Slack:
/chatops run release tag 15.1.0-rc42

This will use the latest commit deployed to production for the various components that we release. If a different commit is necessary for a component, such as GitLab, you should run the following instead:

/chatops run release tag 15.1.0-rc42 --gitlab-sha=XXX

This will then use XXX as the SHA to create the GitLab stable branches.

NOTE: this SHA is only used if the stable branch has yet to be created. If it already exists, the branch is left as-is.

  • Verify that the CE stable branch contains the right commits

    • There should be at least two commits: the last commit from the previous stable branch (usually a version update), and the sync commit created by the merge train.
    • The sync commit will have the message "Add latest changes from gitlab-org/gitlab@15-1-stable-ee"

  • Verify that the pipelines are green

    # In Slack:
/chatops run release status 15.1.0-rc42

  • Notify Engineering Managers and developers that final candidate has been created:

    /chatops run notify ":mega: The stable branch has been created and the release candidate is tagged. Barring any show-stopping issues, this is the final commit to be released on the 22nd.
https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/security/gitlab/-/commits/15-1-stable-ee
You can check if an MR made the cut by using the following ChatOps command: `/chatops run release check [MR_URL] 15.1`
  * Documentation about `release check` chatops command: `https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/release/docs/-/blob/master/general/deploy/auto-deploy.md#status-of-a-merged-mr-with-respect-to-monthly-releases`"

  • Verify that the RC has been deployed to the pre environment

    • Deployment to pre will start automatically. It can take 2 hours to start once the RC is tagged. A notification will be sent to the #announcements channel in Slack when it starts.
    • If required to deploy manually, follow the steps in pre-and-release-environments.md#manual-deployments.

21st: one day before the release

If this date is on a weekend, do this work on the Friday before that weekend.

Instructions for manual deploy 
    ```sh
    # In Slack:
    /chatops run deploy 15.1.0-ee.0 release
    ```
  • Validate 15.1.0 has been passed automated QA by ensuring the release-gitlab-qa-smoke job from the release deploy pipeline is green.

Past this point, no new code can be added to the release that was not included in the final RC.

22nd: release day

Final release is tagged, so any changes will have to initiate a patch release.

  • At 13:00 UTC, post an update about the package building status in #f_upcoming_release 
    :mega: Packages for 15.1.0 are built and will be published at 13:30UTC
  • At 13:30 UTC:
    • ⚠ Make sure that neither packages nor the blog post get published earlier than 13:30UTC without approval by the messaging lead of the release post. Mind that you don't need their approval if you're on time ⚠
    • Publish the packages via ChatOps: 
      # In Slack:
/chatops run publish 15.1.0
    • If anything goes wrong and the release is delayed, ping the release post manager on Slack to make them aware of the issue. Cross-post the slack message to the #marketing channel to notify them too
  • At 14:10 UTC:
    • Verify that EE packages appear on packages.gitlab.com: EE
    • Verify that CE packages appear on packages.gitlab.com: CE
Package Counts

Inside of the omnibus-gitlab pipelines, the Package-and-image-release stage contain many jobs. For all jobs that are part of an Operating System Package, count each of them one time, with the exception of CentOS 7, count this one 3 times.

For example, for 14.9.X-ee:

  • AmazonLinux-2-arm64-release
  • AmazonLinux-2-release
  • CentOS-7-release
  • CentOS-8-arm64-release
  • CentOS-8-release
  • Debian-9-release
  • Debian-10-arm-release
  • Debian-10-release
  • Debian-11-arm-release
  • Debian-11-release
  • OpenSUSE-15.3-arm64-release
  • OpenSUSE-15.3-release
  • SLES-12.5-release
  • SLES-15.2-release
  • Ubuntu-18.04-release
  • Ubuntu-20.04-arm-release
  • Ubuntu-20.04-release

The above would produce 19 total packages.

Points of importance:

  • The amount and type of these jobs changes over time, therefore the number of packages created may change with each release
  • Reach out to the Distribution team for any questions related to needing to confirm packages
  • CE normally has fewer packages
  • Verify that Docker images appear on hub.docker.com: EE / CE
  • Post an update about the status in #f_upcoming_release 
:mega: 15.1.0 is published and publicly available
  • Once all packages are available publicly and GitLab.com is up and running on the release version, ping the release post manager on Slack (#release-post channel) to give them a go to merge the release post at ~14:20 UTC, so that it will be live at 15:00 UTC
  • Create the 15.1.0 version on version.gitlab.com

Release Certification

The release certification process may apply to this release. cc @gitlab-com/gl-security/federal-application-security

/milestone %15.1 /due 25th

gitlab-com/gl-infra/delivery#2049 (closed)

Author Check-list

  • Has documentation been updated?
Edited by Reuben Pereira

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