## Release Notes gitlab-sshd was originally submitted as [a community contribution]https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell/-/merge_requests/394) by @lorenz. It is a lightweight alternative to OpenSSH, used by Gitlab Shell. It is intended for use in containers and will be instrumental in the migration of of git-over-ssh to Kubernetes. gitlab-sshd provides access to the client’s real IP using the PROXY protocol, enabling IP allowlisting, which OpenSSH did not support. Initial benchmarking has shown gitlab-sshd to have a far lower memory footprint and CPU usage than OpenSSH, leading to better performance with fewer server resources.  ### Problem to solve INSERT `gitlab-sshd` is a binary in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell which runs as a persistent SSH daemon. It replaces openssh in some deployment scenarios, potentially including GitLab.com ### Overview An initial community contributor MR in https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-shell/-/merge_requests/394 introduced it; this epic tracks all the follow-up work required to move it from alpha to beta (see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/gitlab-the-product/#alpha-beta-ga ). It's still not *ready* for production use when in beta, but we could advocate to start trialling it on GitLab.com at this level. A follow-up epic tracks the work necessary to take it from beta to generally available: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/5394 ### Road to beta The issues contained in this epic (https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/5219) total to ~ 27w. The current allocation for ~"group::source code" is ~30w per milestones. If we allocated 50% of team capacity to work on this, we should have a beta quality implementation in 2 milestones. Ideally, adding gitlab-sshd as a component within the GitLab Shell container/chart of Cloud Native Gitlab would be done by ~infrastructure. ### `gitlab-sshd`-related Epics - [Make gitlab-sshd beta-quality](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/5219) - [Implement gitlab-sshd on GitLab SaaS](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-com/gl-infra/-/epics/603) - [Make gitlab-sshd production ready on GitLab SaaS](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6296) - [Make gitlab-sshd generally available](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/5394) - [Engineering Allocation (Source Code BE): 02-AUG-2021](https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6523)