Geo glossary
- Tier: Premium, Ultimate
- Offering: GitLab Self-Managed
We are updating the Geo documentation, user interface and commands to reflect these changes. Not all pages comply with these definitions yet.
These are the defined terms to describe all aspects of Geo. Using a set of clearly defined terms helps us to communicate efficiently and avoids confusion. The language on this page aims to be ubiquitous and as simple as possible.
Main terms
We provide example diagrams and statements to demonstrate correct usage of terms.
| Term | Definition | Scope | Discouraged synonyms |
|---|---|---|---|
| Node | An individual server that runs GitLab either with a specific role or as a whole (for example a Rails application node). In a cloud context this can be a specific machine type. | GitLab | instance, server |
| Site | One or a collection of nodes running a single GitLab application. A site can be single-node or multi-node. | GitLab | deployment, installation instance |
| Single-node site | A specific configuration of GitLab that uses exactly one node. | GitLab | single-server, single-instance |
| Multi-node site | A specific configuration of GitLab that uses more than one node. | GitLab | multi-server, multi-instance, high availability |
| Primary site | A GitLab site whose data is being replicated by at least one secondary site. There can only be a single primary site. | Geo-specific | Geo deployment, Primary node |
| Secondary site | A GitLab site that is configured to replicate the data of a primary site. There can be one or more secondary sites. | Geo-specific | Geo deployment, Secondary node |
| Geo deployment | A collection of two or more GitLab sites with exactly one primary site being replicated by one or more secondary sites. | Geo-specific | |
| Reference architecture | A specified configuration of GitLab based on Requests per Second or user count, possibly including multiple nodes and multiple sites. | GitLab | |
| Promoting | Changing the role of a site from secondary to primary. | Geo-specific | |
| Demoting | Changing the role of a site from primary to secondary. | Geo-specific | |
| Failover | The entire process that shifts users from a primary Site to a secondary site. This includes promoting a secondary, but contains other parts as well. For example, scheduling maintenance. | Geo-specific | |
| Replication | Also called “synchronization”. The uni-directional process that updates a resource on a secondary site to match the resource on the primary site. | Geo-specific | |
| Replication slot | The PostgreSQL replication feature that ensures a persistent connection point with the database, and tracks which WAL segments are still needed by standby servers. It can be helpful to name replication slots to match the geo_node_name of a site, but this is not required. | PostgreSQL | |
| Verification | The process of comparing the data that exist on a primary site to the data replicated to a secondary site. Used to ensure integrity of replicated data. | Geo-specific | |
| Unified URL | A single external URL used for all Geo sites. Allows requests to be routed to either the primary Geo site or any secondary Geo sites. | Geo-specific | |
| Geo proxying | A mechanism where secondary Geo sites transparently forward operations to the primary site, except for certain operations that can be handled locally by the secondary sites. | Geo-specific | |
| Blob | Geo-related data type which can be replicated to cover various GitLab components. | Geo-specific | file |
Replicator terms
Geo uses replicators to replicate data of individual GitLab components between primary and secondary sites. They define how the individual data types of these components have to be processed and verified. For example, data of the GitLab container registry has to be handled differently than CI job artifacts. Some components may have more than one replicator which are potentially also named differently. As such, the following table describes the replicator names and to which GitLab component they belong.
The same replicator names are also visible in the Geo section of the Admin area or when using Geo-related console commands.
| Geo replicator name | GitLab component name |
|---|---|
| Ci Secure Files | CI Secure Files |
| Container Repositories | Container registry |
| Dependency Proxy Blobs | Dependency Proxy Images |
| Dependency Proxy Manifests | Dependency Proxy Images |
| Design Management Repositories | Project designs repository |
| Group Wiki Repositories | Group wiki repository |
| Job Artifacts | CI job artifacts |
| Lfs Objects | LFS objects |
| Merge Request Diffs | External merge request diffs |
| Package Files | Package registry |
| Pages Deployments | Pages |
| Pipeline Artifacts | Pipeline artifacts |
| Project Repositories | Project repository |
| Project Wiki Repositories | Project wiki repository |
| Snippet Repositories | Personal Snippets and Project Snippets |
| Terraform State Versions | Versioned Terraform State |
| Uploads | User uploads |
Examples
Single-node site
Multi-node site
Geo deployment - Single-node sites
This Geo deployment has a single-node primary site, a single-node secondary site:
Geo deployment - Multi-node sites
This Geo deployment has a multi-node primary site, a multi-node secondary site:
Geo deployment - Mixed sites
This Geo deployment has a multi-node primary site, a multi-node secondary site and another single-node secondary site:
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