Convert Community Edition to Enterprise Edition

To convert an existing GitLab Community Edition (CE) server installed using the Omnibus GitLab packages to GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE), you install the EE package on top of CE.

Converting from the same version of CE to EE is not explicitly necessary, and any standard upgrade (for example, CE 12.0 to EE 12.1) should work. However, in the following steps we assume that you are upgrading the same version (for example, CE 12.1 to EE 12.1), which is recommended.

The steps can be summed up to:

1. Make a GitLab backup.

2. Find the currently installed GitLab version:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   sudo apt-cache policy gitlab-ce | grep Installed
   

   The output should be similar to: Installed: 13.0.4-ce.0. In that case, the equivalent Enterprise Edition version is: 13.0.4-ee.0. Write this value down.

   For CentOS/RHEL

   sudo rpm -q gitlab-ce
   

   The output should be similar to: gitlab-ce-13.0.4-ce.0.el8.x86_64. In that case, the equivalent Enterprise Edition version is: gitlab-ee-13.0.4-ee.0.el8.x86_64. Write this value down.

3. Add the gitlab-ee Apt or Yum repository:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   curl --silent "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ee/script.deb.sh" | sudo bash
   

   For CentOS/RHEL

   curl --silent "https://packages.gitlab.com/install/repositories/gitlab/gitlab-ee/script.rpm.sh" | sudo bash
   

   The above command finds your OS version and automatically set up the repository. If you are not comfortable installing the repository through a piped script, you can first check its contents.

   If you want to use dpkg/rpm instead of apt-get/yum, go through the first step to find the current GitLab version, then follow Upgrade using a manually downloaded package, and then add your license.

4. Install the gitlab-ee package. The install automatically uninstalls the gitlab-ce package on your GitLab server. reconfigure Omnibus right after the gitlab-ee package is installed. Make sure that you install the exact same GitLab version:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   ## Make sure the repositories are up-to-date
   sudo apt-get update
   
   ## Install the package using the version you wrote down from step 1
   sudo apt-get install gitlab-ee=13.0.4-ee.0
   
   ## Reconfigure GitLab
   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

   For CentOS/RHEL

   ## Install the package using the version you wrote down from step 1
   sudo yum install gitlab-ee-13.0.4-ee.0.el8.x86_64
   
   ## Reconfigure GitLab
   sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
   

5. Now activate GitLab Enterprise Edition by adding your license.

6. After you confirm that GitLab is working as expected, you may remove the old Community Edition repository:

   For Debian/Ubuntu

   sudo rm /etc/apt/sources.list.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.list
   

   For CentOS/RHEL

   sudo rm /etc/yum.repos.d/gitlab_gitlab-ce.repo
   

7. Optional. Set up the Elasticsearch integration to enable advanced search.

That’s it! You can now use GitLab Enterprise Edition! To upgrade to a newer version, follow Upgrade using the official repositories.