Geo with Object storage

Geo can be used in combination with Object Storage (AWS S3, or other compatible object storage).

Currently, secondary nodes can use either:

  • The same storage bucket as the primary node.
  • A replicated storage bucket.

To have:

Read more about using object storage with GitLab.

Enabling GitLab managed object storage replication

Introduced in GitLab 12.4.

Caution: This is a beta feature and is not ready yet for production use at any scale.

Secondary nodes can replicate files stored on the primary node regardless of whether they are stored on the local filesystem or in object storage.

To enable GitLab replication, you must:

  1. Go to Admin Area > Geo.
  2. Press Edit on the secondary node.
  3. Enable the Allow this secondary node to replicate content on Object Storage checkbox.

For LFS, follow the documentation to set up LFS object storage.

For CI job artifacts, there is similar documentation to configure jobs artifact object storage

For user uploads, there is similar documentation to configure upload object storage

If you want to migrate the primary node’s files to object storage, you can configure the secondary in a few ways:

  • Use the exact same object storage.
  • Use a separate object store but leverage your object storage solution’s built-in replication.
  • Use a separate object store and enable the Allow this secondary node to replicate content on Object Storage setting.

GitLab does not currently support the case where both:

  • The primary node uses local storage.
  • A secondary node uses object storage.

Third-party replication services

When using Amazon S3, you can use CRR to have automatic replication between the bucket used by the primary node and the bucket used by secondary nodes.

If you are using Google Cloud Storage, consider using Multi-Regional Storage. Or you can use the Storage Transfer Service, although this only supports daily synchronization.

For manual synchronization, or scheduled by cron, please have a look at: