Gitlab Server migration - Alternative method

How to Use GitLab Migrations
1

Hello Team,

As part of our VM Maintenace we are migrating our Gitlab to another server with an upgraded OS version.

As recommended I am following the Backup and Restore method to perform this task. Although I have noticed it takes around 4 hours to finish just the restore part and hence the downtime.

Is there a quicker way to perform the same activity?

I’ve read this Topic where you can do this without using restore but is it recommended?

Thank you

2

The topic you linked is doable, as some of the other people in the post have responded using such method. You do need to pay attention to permissions though, and I did do something similar recently whereby I had to repair a few permissions related with postgres or gitaly, but otherwise the majority of stuff worked. I have also restored a Gitlab installation using restic, of which I posted about here: 16.8.0 Backup/Restore Issues - how to repair? - #14 by iwalker this can potentially be a quicker method but again, permissions are some issues that need to be addressed.

The backup/restore procedures are probably the more easier and stress-free but as you found in your situation, when you have a lot of data to restore, it takes quite a lot of time.

3

Hi, thanks for the quick reply

In the first part, did you use rsync -avz to copy data? If yes, it should ideally preserve permissions right and we wouldn’t need to repair permissions of postgres or gitaly.

4

I used restic, but if you are using rsync, you need to use the function that doesn’t preserve UID/GID, since this will be different on the new server for each of the users created.

5

Yeah that makes sense,

Just for clarification, do I need to also transfer /opt/gitlab data to the new server or would /var/opt/gitlab and /etc/gitlab/ suffice?

I notice that there are a few symlinks from /var/opt/gitlab to /opt/gitlab (during reconfigure)

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6

Normally just /var/opt/gitlab, /etc/gitlab and if you want the log files, then /var/log/gitlab. The /op/gitlab directory is where the binaries are from, and the main gitlab package should be installed already on the server so you don’t need that.

1 Like
7

Hi, I tried migrating the server using the following steps -

  1. New Server - Create a new Vanilla Gitlab Server
  2. New Server - Reconfigure with the template gitlab.rb to setup the binaries
  3. Make sure UIDs & GIDs are same in both the servers.
  4. Old Server - Flush the Redis database to disk, and prepare for block volume migration using the following command.
sudo /opt/gitlab/embedded/bin/redis-cli -s /var/opt/gitlab/redis/redis.socket save && sudo gitlab-ctl stop && sudo gitlab-ctl start postgresql && sudo gitlab-ctl start gitaly
  1. Cloned the Old Block Volume, copied /etc/gitlab files as well and attached to the New Server. (Made sure UIDs and GIDs of the files match)
  2. New Server - Reconfigure

Following this method fails at the last reconfigure with this error -

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