Cells

  • Offering: GitLab.com
  • Status: Experiment

This feature is available for administrators of GitLab.com only. This feature is not available for GitLab Self-Managed or GitLab Dedicated instances.

This page contains information related to upcoming products, features, and functionality. It is important to note that the information presented is for informational purposes only. Please do not rely on this information for purchasing or planning purposes. The development, release, and timing of any products, features, or functionality may be subject to change or delay and remain at the sole discretion of GitLab Inc.

Cells 1.0 is in development. For more information about the state of cell development, see epic 12383.

To test cell functionality, configure the GitLab Rails console.

Configuration

To configure your GitLab instance as a Cell instance:

The cells related configuration in config/gitlab.yml is in this format:

  cell:
    enabled: true
    id: 1
    database:
      skip_sequence_alteration: false
    topology_service_client:
      address: topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443
      ca_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-ca.pem
      certificate_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-cert.pem
      private_key_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-key.pem

  1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add the following lines:

    gitlab_rails['cell'] = {
  enabled: true,
  id: 1,
  database: {
    skip_sequence_alteration: false
  },
  topology_service_client: {
    enabled: true,
    address: 'topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443',
    ca_file: 'path/to/your/ca/.pem',
    certificate_file: 'path/to/your/cert/.pem',
    private_key_file: 'path/to/your/key/.pem'
  }
}

  2. Reconfigure and restart GitLab:

    sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo gitlab-ctl restart

  1. Edit gitlab_values.yaml:

    global:
  appConfig:
    cell:
      enabled: true
      id: 1
      database:
        skipSequenceAlteration: false
      topologyServiceClient:
        address: "topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443"
        tls:
          enabled: true

  2. Save the file and apply the new values:

    helm upgrade -f gitlab_values.yaml gitlab gitlab/gitlab
ConfigurationDefault valueDescription
cell.enabledfalseTo configure whether the instance is a Cell or not. false means all Cell features are disabled. session_cookie_prefix_token is not affected, and can be set separately.
cell.idnilRequired to be a positive integer when cell.enabled is true. Otherwise, it must be nil. This is the unique integer identifier for the cell in a cluster. This ID is used inside the routable tokens. When cell.id is nil, the other attributes inside the routable tokens, like organization_id will still be used
cell.database.skip_sequence_alterationfalseWhen true, skips database sequence alteration for the cell. Enable for the legacy cell (cell-1) before the monolith cell is available for use, being tracked in this epic: Phase 6: Monolith Cell.
cell.topology_service_client.address"topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443"Required when cell.enabled is true. Address and port of the topology service server.
cell.topology_service_client.tls.enabledtrueWhen true, enables mTLS for communication with the topology service. This requires the cell.topology_service_client.tls.secret to be properly configured. If set to false, the connection will be made without TLS encryption.
cell.topology_service_client.tls.secretnilKubernetes TLS Secret name that contains the mTLS credentials. Required when TLS is enabled. The secret must include tls.crt and tls.key keys. If not explicitly set, defaults to <release.name>-topology-tls. This secret must be created manually; the Helm chart does not create it automatically.

For information on how to configure other components of the cells architecture, see:

  1. Topology service configuration
  2. HTTP router configuration