I am trying to sort out how we re-host our CI currently as we migrate to GitLab. I really cannot get my head around the docs on what the ‘shared runners’ are.
It says you can self host shared runners (cool!) but then it says here:
CI/CD minutes quota | GitLab
The cost factors on self-managed instances are:
-
0 for public projects, so they do not consume CI/CD minutes.
-
1 for internal and private projects.
Does that mean if I share a runner between projects, that I have hosted, I have to consume minutes for this?
@sam_jones
Welcome to the forum!
A shared runner is one that’s shared across all projects of an instance. Public projects on your self managed instance that use your shared runners use the cost factors described.
Cost Factor for projects hosted in GitLab.com are calculated a little differently.
If you are hosting your own runners (group runners or specific runners) those are not counted against your CI/CD Minutes Quota. You can continue to use your self managed runners for projects hosted on GitLab.com.
I hope this helps!
-James H, GitLab Product Manager, Verify:Pipeline Execution
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aaah ok so the shared runners are always the GitLab hosted runners? While Group and Specific are the functions to share runners out for my orgs? 
Thank you @jheimbuck_gl
@sam_jones
If you are using gitlab.com to host your project Shared Runners mean the GitLab hosted runners. So if you move over to GitLab.com the shared runners are hosted by GitLab and pipelines ran on them count towards your CI/CD Minute quota. You can host your own group or specific runners which do not count towards that quota.
If you are hosting your own GitLab server shared runners are the runners shared with that instance by users on the instance.
I hope that clarifies!
-James H, GitLab Product Manager, Verify:Pipeline Execution