Use the built-in MinIO service for object storage

This migration guide is for when you migrate from a package-based installation to the Helm chart and you want to use the built-in MinIO service for object storage. This is better suited for testing purposes. For production use, you are advised to set up an external object storage

The easiest way to figure out the access details to built-in MinIO cluster is to look at the gitlab.yml file that is generated in Sidekiq, Webservice and Toolbox pods.

To grab it from the Sidekiq pod:

1. Find out the name of the Sidekiq pod:

   kubectl get pods -lapp=sidekiq
   

2. Grab the gitlab.yml file from Sidekiq pod:

   kubectl exec <sidekiq pod name> -- cat /srv/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml
   

3. In the gitlab.yml file, there is a section for uploads with details of object storage connection. Something similar to the following:

   uploads:
     enabled: true
     object_store:
     enabled: true
     remote_directory: gitlab-uploads
     proxy_download: true
     connection:
       provider: AWS
       region: <S3 region>
       aws_access_key_id: "<access key>"
       aws_secret_access_key: "<secret access key>"
       host: <Minio host>
       endpoint: <Minio endpoint>
       path_style: true
   

4. Use this information to configure the object storage in the /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file of the package-based deployment.

   For connecting to the MinIO service from outside the cluster, the MinIO host URL alone is enough. Helm charts based installations are configured to redirect requests coming to that URL automatically to the corresponding endpoint. So, you don’t need to set the endpoint value in the connection settings in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb.