Setup standalone Redis

The instructions here make use of the Linux package for Ubuntu. This package provides versions of the services that are guaranteed to be compatible with the charts’ services.

Create VM with the Linux package

Create a VM on your provider of choice, or locally. This was tested with VirtualBox, KVM, and Bhyve. Ensure that the instance is reachable from the cluster.

Install Ubuntu Server onto the VM that you have created. Ensure that openssh-server is installed, and that all packages are up to date. Configure networking and a hostname. Make note of the hostname/IP, and ensure it is both resolvable and reachable from your Kubernetes cluster. Be sure firewall policies are in place to allow traffic.

Follow the installation instructions for the Linux package. When you perform the package installation, do not provide the EXTERNAL_URL= value. We do not want automatic configuration to occur, as we’ll provide a very specific configuration in the next step.

Configure Linux package installation

Create a minimal gitlab.rb file to be placed at /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb. Be very explicit about what is enabled on this node, use the contents below.

note
This example is not intended to provide Redis for scaling.
# Listen on all addresses
redis['bind'] = '0.0.0.0'
# Set the defaul port, must be set.
redis['port'] = 6379
# Set password, as in the secret `gitlab-redis` populated in Kubernetes
redis['password'] = 'REDIS_PASSWORD'

## Disable everything else
gitlab_rails['enable'] = false
sidekiq['enable'] = false
puma['enable']=false
registry['enable'] = false
gitaly['enable'] = false
gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
nginx['enable'] = false
prometheus_monitoring['enable'] = false
postgresql['enable'] = false

After creating gitlab.rb, reconfigure the package with gitlab-ctl reconfigure. After the task completes, check the running processes with gitlab-ctl status. The output should appear similar to: 

# gitlab-ctl status
run: logrotate: (pid 4856) 1859s; run: log: (pid 31262) 77460s
run: redis: (pid 30562) 77637s; run: log: (pid 30561) 77637s