GitLab GCP Migration Project | Hacker News Reader

GitLab GCP Migration Project

gitlab.com

64 pointsaxiomdata31625 comments

Does anyone know why they decided to migrate to GCP? I'm trying to find an explanation in their project docs with no luck

It seems like Kubernetes+GKE is a big draw: https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abando...

I'd be curious to hear if Microsoft buying GitHub had anything to do with it as well.

I'd wager they got some kind of discount or exclusive pricing as well? Big ticket companies (which Gitlab could arguably be called in the tech world) moving to a cloud platform could generate a fair bit of buzz and free marketing?

It'll look good for GCP if, after the move, GitLab no longer has frequent stability issues, regardless of level of cause-effect.

Microsoft isn't known for playing fair, so it seems smart to reduce the risk by migrating elsewhere.

What do you mean? Has MS screwed people on Azure pricing? I’m confused about what you’re saying and how it relates to Azure and GitLab.

Microsoft have a very long, very well documented history of anti-social behaviour. :)

For just one tip of that iceberg, this Wikipedia article seems like a good place to start:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation

The plan to move to Google Cloud was in motion for many months, way before talks about a potential GitHub acquisition started.

They adopted Kubernetes relatively early, and as they progressed their reliance on Azure-specific services went down. At that point move to another cloud was a purely financial decision.

The move to k8s was not strictly a means to allow cloud migration. GitLab sells their Enteprise product, and the Kubernetes-based deployment helps customers with product trial and adoption. Cloud migration is a welcomed side-effect of that initiative.

> At that point move to another cloud was a purely financial decision.

And this is the promise of k8s for companies (and the peril of k8s for cloud providers).

this might have something to do with it: http://uk.businessinsider.com/gitlab-raises-20-million-from-...

GCP has a better dollar/performance ratio compared to AWS.

They have a goals a section: Goals of the GCP Migration Project

> In order of descending priority. Most important goals at the top.

1) Use the opportunity of an inter-cloud migration to make GitLab.com suitable for mission critical client workloads Migrate GitLab.com from the Microsoft Azure Cloud platform to the Google Cloud while keeping downtime to a minimum

2) Use the same helm charts for GitLab.com as our EEP customers use

3) The goal here is for customers to be able to spin up a 10 person GitLab EEP instance in Kubernetes and scale it up to 100k users (or more) with little effort.

4) Use the migration as a marketing opportunity for GitLab Inc through creation of technical content

> Does anyone know why they decided to migrate to GCP?

You are unlikely to find an explanation in their docs.

Here's a likely answer:

> Kubernetes? Yeah right... The reasons are very clear: 1) GitHub being acquired by Microsoft. 2) Google is an investor in GitLab (through GV).

Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17393503

I wonder if Gitlab is trying to make themselves more Google friendly in hope of a Google acquisition?

In the news about the Microsoft GitHub acquisition,it was mentioned that Google also tried to acquire Github. So Google is definitely interested in buying an open source project host.

Why is this downvoted? Definitely a valid point.

I think people are literally like "boo, don't get bought"

Yeah, I believe this whole move was prompted after Google Ventures invested in them

Google was an early investor in Gitlab. I think if Google wanted to buy Gitlab, it wouldn't take much.

They are joined by Ashton Kutcher and Joe Montana. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/gitlab-com/investors...

What a world we live in!

I wonder whether internally Google recognizes that shutting down Google Code rather than investing in it was an error.

My guess would be that that is so long ago, most of the people responsible or involved have churned out of Google already. I don't recall that move ever generating the kind of outrage that e.g. shutting down Google Reader did.

So probably just one more inhabitant of Google's forgotten island of misfit toys.

I browsed the docs a bit, but can’t find a clear status or planned switchover date.

Can anyone point me in the right direction?

What I found was https://docs.google.com/document/d/1p3Brri44_SKyakViKB-LGWCm...

But those dates seem pretty much passed: (removed table from gdocs, couldn't get formatting right now)

Yup, I found those, too. But, as you said, those dates are gone, so they can't be up to date.

We've not spent a lot of time on making this publicly readable, but the migration is moving forward steadily. We don't have a planned switchover data yet, but it's safe to say that it'll happen this summer.

We're writing a blog post on it here: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/...

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