Sync/Mirror Repo from Gitlab to another VPN protected Gitlab Instance

How to Use GitLab Self-managed
1

Hey there,

we are using Gitlab, now a client wants to have the work also in his own Repo. So i thought a sync between those two Gitlab Repos would be perfect.

However, the client is using his own Gitlab Instance on their Server where the whole access is protected by a VPN connection.

Is there any way to mirror the (Gitlab hosted) Repo, with another one ( self hosted ) which is protected by a VPN?

2

The protected gitlab instance would need to have internet access to be able to import the repository from your gitlab instance. If it doesn’t then it won’t be possible.

The alternative is download the repository as a zip or tar archive and let the client import it himself manually.

3

The Gitlab instance is only reachable if you’re connected to the VPN.
So i thought maybe it’s somehow possible to connect a Gitlab Account with a VPN or anything like that - So you are able to connect your Gitlab hosted repo with the Gitlab server which is protected with a VPN.

4

Yes I understand that the gitlab instance is protected via a VPN and you can only connect to it via VPN. Question is, does his protected gitlab instance itself have access to the internet so that he can do updates to it, eg: upgrade Debian/Ubuntu/CentOS or whatever distribution it’s running? Or does he not let his server download from the internet? I’m not talking about VPN access at this point.

So it would be like this:

  1. Open VPN
  2. Login to protected gitlab server.
  3. Choose New Project.
  4. Click Import Project.
  5. Repo by URL
  6. Provide URL to gitlab hosted repo to import from (eg: your gitlab server)
  7. Click create project.

His private protected gitlab server if it had outbound access to internet to download stuff, would then connect to your gitlab server and import the project to his.

If his server doesn’t have the ability to download from the internet either, then export as a zip/tar/bzip and import on his server once the VPN connection is open.

A gitlab user account cannot open a VPN to then connect to his instance and send the repo. You import rather, so it’s like me importing to my gitlab server my old repo from github for example or any other git-type server. You don’t do it the other way around.

1 Like
5

Thanks so much for your detailed answer :heart:
I will have a look if we can import a project from the VPN protected Gitlab instance.