Migrating from GItLab Community Edition on Private Server to GItLab SaaS

How to Use GitLab Migrations
,
1

So I have GitLab Community Edition installed on a Private Server. We have a Team of about 35 Developers who are using it. I’ve posted here about a lot of issues relating to Timeouts, but outside of that, I’ve been quite happy with what it’s offered.

I’ve been hosting it in my Home for a couple years now, with fairly decent Down/Up Speeds, but now I’m moving out of it, and my new home, well … offers awful Up Speeds (we’re talking from 1 gbps to 35 mbps). To have someone clone q roughly 50 GB Git Project at such speeds is going to be a major pain in the rear for Development. And while I’m looking for a Server Colocation to hopefully house the Server long-term, I don’t have much time left to find an alternative home for my Team’s Git Project (let’s just say I had a great office building lined up that declined to house it last-minute).

So I wanted to ask about GitLab SaaS and it’s Free Trial:

  1. Once I start the Trial, how would I go about migrating our GitLab Project to GitLab SaaS?
  2. What would you be URL to pull a GitLab SaaS Project from?
  3. Does the GitLab SaaS Trial limit the number of people that can access the Project?
  4. What kinds of Down/Up Speeds does GitLab SaaS Offer?
  5. What happens to the Project after the GitLab SaaS Trial ends?
  6. If I decide I’m happy with GitLab SaaS, how expensive is hosting?

Sorry if these seem like basic questions, but I’m on a real time limit here.

2

Hi, so some replies, I’m not Gitlab staff, so I cannot answer everything.

  1. You can import repositories, or you can push/pull the repositories from your existing server, providing it is accessible across the internet.
  2. Gitlab.com uses urls like gitlab.com/username/projectname or gitlab.com/groupname/projectname be prepared for some names not to be available or even similar to the ones you have right now as someone could already have groups/projects under these names.
  3. Can’t answer that, haven’t used trial features yet.
  4. Can’t answer that, best would be to test using push/pull for a project of a few 100mb and see how it goes.
  5. Nothing happens to the project, only the features that you might have been using will now be inaccessible, and only the free functionality will be available. So you will need to be aware of what premium features you use during the trial period.
  6. Gitlab SaaS is publicly available, you can check premium pricing here: GitLab Pricing | GitLab

Also, you can always migrate your Gitlab installation from your own personal server to the cloud - eg: get a server at a hosting company that has at least 4cpu, 8gb ram, and enough disk space for hosting all your projects. My personal installation is hosted in the cloud rather than a server at my premises. Costs, all depends on how much total disk space your projects take. If we’re talking more than 100gb, then I would be in a situation for getting a dedicated server, which if I was to go for SATA 2TB I can have for about $60 per month, or 500gb NVMe for the same price with 12cpu and 32GB ram. VPS with approx 80/100GB disk, 4cpu, 8gb ram would be about $20.

3

Thank you for answering @iwalker !

I’ve already got a Refurbished Dell PowerEdge R710 hosting our GitLab VM. Was a pain to Reverse Proxy it with several other VMs, but it’s been working for our Team for the last 2 years. We have a roughly ~30 GB Project, so I really don’t want to think how long that would take to clone at 35 mbps …

So even before I begin the Trial, I’m currently in the process of importing our project to GitLab.com. I read “The import will time out after 180 minutes. For repositories that take longer, use a clone/push combination.” I certainly hope it won’t take THAT long to import …

If it imports properly, our Team Name I had already reserved, and our Project Name won’t need to change either. So no issues there.

I have a few more questions:

  1. Are there any limits to the number of Group Members that can be attached to a Private GitLab.com Project?
  2. Are there any limits to the size of a GitLab.com Project on a Free Account? What about a Premium Account?
  3. Can a GitLab.com Project be switched between different owners?
4

Free account has 10GB repository limit. I believe paid accounts can be more than this according to the Gitlab docs but also only on your own server it seems Account and limit settings | GitLab and for Gitlab.com exactly here for repo sizes: GitLab.com settings | GitLab and can purchase additional storage: Licensing and subscription FAQ | GitLab

I personally don’t use Gitlab SaaS, so unsure if there is a group member limit and also unsure if projects can be switched between owners, but I expect it’s possible for the person who is the current owner/maintainer to add someone and set their permissions appropriately to Owner. Maybe someone else will post here to answer those queries for you.

5

So I was successful in importing my Git Project from our Private Server to GitLab.com (28.3 GB). The Project is actually a bit over 1 GB less in terms of the Repo Size, but the Import says it was successful, so I suspect nothing was missed (just that it excluded junk repo data?). 3 Merge Requests seems to be missing, which must not migrate during a Git Project Import.

Yeah, it is mentioning a 10 GB limit. This is whether the Project is in a Free Group or an Ultimate Group which I’m trialing.