More fairly to GitLab it was the underlying server that broke initially. The issue from there was that I couldn't restore from the backup as the newly installed server was also a newer version of GitLab

Tried restoring it to the older version to run through the upgrade path and the process didn't want to work. Wish I could be more specific here but I gave up on it and decided it'd just be quicker to whip up a script to recreate all the groups/projects/CICD in a new install and push repos from backups

Don't let your GitLab server get outdated and don't consider it a valid backup unless it was taken with the latest version to avoid the same

Also it wasn't relevant here but make sure you're backing up the etc files too, while that wasn't an issue for me it could easily trip you over in a worst case scenario ( https://docs.gitlab.com/charts/backup-restore/backup.html#ba... )

Not a complaint, it's just one of the hats that needs wearing sometimes, would have been easier on me if someone else was handling it though :P