[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":820},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/building-gitlab-with-gitlabcom-how-gitlab-inspired-dedicated":3,"navigation-en-us":45,"banner-en-us":445,"footer-en-us":455,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Andrew Newdigate|Craig Miskell|John Coghlan":694,"blog-related-posts-en-us-building-gitlab-with-gitlabcom-how-gitlab-inspired-dedicated":732,"assessment-promotions-en-us":771,"next-steps-en-us":810},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":10,"categorySlug":11,"config":12,"content":16,"description":10,"extension":31,"isFeatured":14,"meta":32,"navigation":33,"path":34,"publishedDate":24,"seo":35,"stem":39,"tagSlugs":40,"__hash__":44},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/building-gitlab-with-gitlabcom-how-gitlab-inspired-dedicated.yml","Building Gitlab With Gitlabcom How Gitlab Inspired Dedicated",[7,8,9],"andrew-newdigate","craig-miskell","john-coghlan",null,"engineering",{"slug":13,"featured":14,"template":15},"building-gitlab-with-gitlabcom-how-gitlab-inspired-dedicated",false,"BlogPost",{"title":17,"description":18,"authors":19,"heroImage":23,"date":24,"body":25,"category":11,"tags":26},"Building GitLab with GitLab: How GitLab.com inspired Dedicated","Learn how the multi-tenancy SaaS solution, GitLab.com, influenced the design of the single-tenancy SaaS, GitLab Dedicated.",[20,21,22],"Andrew Newdigate","Craig Miskell","John Coghlan","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659740/Blog/Hero%20Images/building-gitlab-with-gitlab-no-type.png","2023-08-03","\nEarlier this year, we announced [the general availability of GitLab Dedicated](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-dedicated-available/), our single-tenancy software-as-a-service (SaaS) offering. Dedicated, which addresses the needs of customers with stringent compliance requirements while maintaining speed, efficiency, and security, was developed from the lessons we learned building and using GitLab.com, our multi-tenancy model. Although there is overlap in how we manage both platforms, such as the same service-level monitoring stack, there were significant considerations that sparked the need for new design decisions, including how we approach automation, databases, monitoring, and availability. In this blog, we share some of those decision points and their outcomes.\n\n## GitLab platform options\nBefore we dive into the evolution of GitLab Dedicated, let’s level-set on GitLab’s [portfolio of platform models](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/subscriptions/choosing_subscription.html#choose-a-subscription):\n- GitLab.com, a.k.a. multi-tenant GitLab SaaS on our pricing page and in our documentation\n- GitLab Dedicated, single-tenant SaaS that satisfies compliance requirements such as data residency, isolation, and private networking\n- GitLab self-managed, in which customers install, administer, and maintain their own GitLab instance\n\nEach method meets the different needs of our wide range of customers and requires a unique approach for how we create, package, and deploy the application.\n\nWhile both GitLab.com and Dedicated are SaaS-based, there are key differences between the two. The multi-tenant GitLab.com is the largest hosted instance of GitLab and services thousands of customers and millions of users. Because the platform's reliability is critical to so many customers and because of the iterative nature of how GitLab.com was built, decisions have been made along the way that are unique to the scale of this specific instance.\n\nIn contrast, GitLab Dedicated is a single-tenant SaaS application that is hosted by GitLab in the customer's region of choice (GitLab.com is hosted in the U.S.). While still providing a GitLab-managed SaaS solution for our customers, Dedicated instances are fully isolated from one another, running on a platform that automates the configuration and provisioning of the instances, along with automating as many of the day-two operations as possible, such as maintenance, monitoring, and optimization.\n\nHere are some examples of how Dedicated has used the blueprint of GitLab.com.\n\n## Improved automated deployments\nGitLab.com is a permanent installation with a great deal of history, having evolved significantly since it was first developed. Originally, it was deployed on a single instance in Amazon AWS, before migrating to Microsoft Azure, where it continued to scale out. From Azure, it migrated to its current cloud, Google Cloud Platform. Since then, many customer workloads have [migrated into Kubernetes](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/year-of-kubernetes/) and are supported by the Google Kubernetes Engine ([GKE](https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine)).\n\nWith GitLab Dedicated, we're building smaller instances that rely on automation, repeatability, and deterministic environments. All customer tenant GitLab instance operations must be 100% automated, including provisioning, upgrades, scaling, configuration changes, and any other routine operations. The stack relies heavily on the GitLab Environment Toolkit ([GET](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-environment-toolkit/-/blob/main/docs/environment_advanced_hybrid.md)) Cloud Native Hybrid, which uses the GitLab Helm charts for stateless workloads (e.g., Rails) and Omnibus for deployments to VMs (e.g., Gitaly). GET helps with the deployments targeting [reference architectures](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/reference_architectures/) and coordinating the provisioning of cloud resources, including compute instances, Kubernetes clusters, managed Postgres databases and more.\n\nAs much as GET automates, it has a certain amount of required setup, which is acceptable to perform manually for one-off or otherwise long-lived deployments, but in order to scale Dedicated we also had to automate that process, which we did with Terraform. Because this was a greenfield approach, we were able to be particularly careful with privileges. Our current cloud deployment target is AWS, so we developed a detailed identity and access management ([IAM](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/IAM/latest/UserGuide/access_policies.html)) policy to grant each stage of deployment only the strictly necessary access. We also use IAM role assumption from trusted workloads in a central AWS account to eliminate the need for explicit credentials.\n\nDeployments follow this process in order:\n- An account creation job running from a trusted location creates a fresh AWS account in an [AWS Organization](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/index.html), placing it in the correct Organizational Unit to automatically have a [CloudFormation StackSet](https://docs.aws.amazon.com/organizations/latest/userguide/services-that-can-integrate-cloudformation.html) applied, with ongoing updates handled by AWS when needed. This allows us to operate the entire lifecycle of the tenant account using IAM Role Assumption rather than generating and storing static IAM credentials.\n- Prepare stage sets up a fresh AWS account ready to receive a deployment; the privileges are quite high powered, but still limited to the necessary areas, including creating the next role.\n- Onboard stage creates some high-level resources and otherwise does the setup that GET requires to be able to run, including creating the roles for the next stages with their own limited privileges.\n- Provision stage is mostly about running GET Terraform and creating the compute and storage resources onto which GitLab will be deployed, with a few additions for our specific needs.\n- Configure stage runs to deploy the GitLab application onto the resources created earlier. At its core, this is the GET Ansible stage, but it includes our own Terraform wrapper as well to handle our specific needs.\n\nOnce these stages complete, a fully deployed GitLab instance is ready to go.\n\nConfiguration changes and GitLab upgrades execute the same set of stages, ensuring everything is still configured correctly and applying any pending changes. In the early days of GitLab Dedicated this was done in GitLab CI/CD pipelines operating on GitLab.com, with the tenant descriptions as JSON files in a repository, which was an effective and simple place to start.\n\nHowever, this multi-stage deployment is now managed by [Switchboard](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/platforms//switchboard/), a portal we built specifically for GitLab Dedicated. Switchboard is a bespoke Rails application, which will be the single source of truth for configuration, accessible by customers to manage customer-facing settings, as well as GitLab Dedicated staff for general management. Switchboard will be responsible for automating regular upgrades, including gradual rollouts across the fleet of Dedicated instances.\n\n## Databases geared towards the needs of single tenancy\nGitLab.com uses self-managed Postgres and Redis. For GitLab Dedicated, we wanted to leverage AWS’s managed services as much as possible. Examples include RDS, Elasticache, and OpenSearch, the AWS Elasticsearch managed service. Some of these services may not always be able to support GitLab.com-scale platforms, but they handle the traffic of a single-tenant instance well and provide reliable failovers and ongoing maintenance with no effort on our part.\n\n## Monitoring aligned with strict compliance needs\nThe observability stack for GitLab Dedicated relies on the expertise we gained from building GitLab.com. The monitoring, logging, and availability infrastructure is all maintained within the customer's AWS account, nothing is shared. We receive low-context alerts from these private systems. They serve as a mechanism to direct us to the customer account so we can review what is going on and triage the underlying issues if needed. This is helpful with regulators and compliance as nothing can leak because it doesn't leave the system.\n\nWhile Dedicated and GitLab.com share much of the same monitoring stack, Dedicated instances have tended to reveal different issues within our application. This is due to GitLab.com being a multi-tenant instance, while GitLab Dedicated instances are single-tenant.\n\nThink of the adage, \"[Your 9s are not my 9s](https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2019/07/15/giant/).\" In a platform at the scale of GitLab.com, a subset of users who encounter an issue in part of the application may be a very small percentage of the overall user base. The small impact relative to the scale of the platform may not create an alert. In a single-tenant instance, however, the same bugs or scaling issues can quickly impact a higher percentage of the overall users of the instance, escalating the issue's importance. Applying our service-level monitoring to single-tenant GitLab instances has benefited GitLab users who had encountered bugs that were overlooked in the volume of GitLab.com usage. When we identify issues in a Dedicated instance, we resolve them within the product.\n\n## High availability for all components\nConsidering the hybrid environment and the level of service that we want to offer to our customers, we have made some minor changes from the [standard reference architecture](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/reference_architectures/).\n\nOne such change is introducing high availability for all components. For the lower size (i.e., up to 2,000 users), our architecture ships by default with all the components in full redundant mode. Components like RDS and Elasticache will have a replica in a different Availability Zone. This is referred to as the primary region and we have to define how it will look in the [Geo replicas](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/administration/geo/setup/database.html).\n\n## Only on Dedicated\nIn addition to the other changes we made, we also built some features that are only used for GitLab Dedicated:\n- Bring your own key - customers can provide and manage the encryption keys used to encrypt AWS resources such as storage, allowing a customer to revoke access should that ever become necessary. This is not something that can be offered in a multi-tenant system like GitLab.com.\n- Switchboard - as mentioned above, Switchboard was purpose-built for Dedicated. It is a multi-tenant Ruby on Rails application, accessible by GitLab Dedicated customer administrators and GitLab Dedicated team members. Using this interface, customers can change the available application runtime settings, access provided graphs, add additional products, and more. The main Switchboard instance serves as a single source of truth for global configuration and status across multiple cloud providers and regions.\n- PrivateLink networking - allows traffic between tenant AWS accounts and customer accounts without exposing data to the internet. - Other network features - including traffic filtering and private hosted zones.\n\nDedicated has been an exciting project and a great learning experience for our team. We were able to apply the knowledge accumulated in building GitLab.com to deliver an important new product for our customers in a very efficient way. You can learn more about GitLab Dedicated by visiting our [Dedicated page](https://about.gitlab.com/dedicated/) or contacting a GitLab sales representative.\n\n_Check out the [first installment in our \"Building GitLab with GitLab\" series](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/building-gitlab-with-gitlab-api-fuzzing-workflow/), which takes you behind the scenes of the development of our web API fuzz testing._\n",[27,28,29,30],"AWS","DevSecOps 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to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[738],"Tim Rizzi","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772111172/mwhgbjawn62kymfwrhle.png","2026-03-12","If you're a platform engineer, you've probably had this conversation:\n  \n*\"Security says we need to use hardened base images.\"*\n\n*\"Great, where do I configure credentials for yet another registry?\"*\n\n*\"Also, how do we make sure everyone actually uses them?\"*\n\nOr this one:\n\n*\"Why are our builds so slow?\"*\n\n*\"We're pulling the same 500MB image from Docker Hub in every single job.\"*\n\n*\"Can't we just cache these somewhere?\"*\n\nI've been working on [Container Virtual Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/) at GitLab specifically to solve these problems. It's a pull-through cache that sits in front of your upstream registries — Docker Hub, dhi.io (Docker Hardened Images), MCR, and Quay — and gives your teams a single endpoint to pull from. Images get cached on the first pull. Subsequent pulls come from the cache. Your developers don't need to know or care which upstream a particular image came from.\n\nThis article shows you how to set up Container Virtual Registry, specifically with Docker Hardened Images in mind, since that's a combination that makes a lot of sense for teams concerned about security and not making their developers' lives harder.\n\n## What problem are we actually solving?\n\nThe Platform teams I usually talk to manage container images across three to five registries:\n\n* **Docker Hub** for most base images\n* **dhi.io** for Docker Hardened Images (security-conscious workloads)\n* **MCR** for .NET and Azure tooling\n* **Quay.io** for Red Hat ecosystem stuff\n* **Internal registries** for proprietary images\n\nEach one has its own:\n\n* Authentication mechanism\n* Network latency characteristics\n* Way of organizing image paths\n\nYour CI/CD configs end up littered with registry-specific logic. Credential management becomes a project unto itself. And every pipeline job pulls the same base images over the network, even though they haven't changed in weeks.\n\nContainer Virtual Registry consolidates this. One registry URL. One authentication flow (GitLab's). Cached images are served from GitLab's infrastructure rather than traversing the internet each time.\n\n## How it works\n\nThe model is straightforward:\n\n```text\nYour pipeline pulls:\n  gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/1000016/python:3.13\n\nVirtual registry checks:\n  1. Do I have this cached? → Return it\n  2. No? → Fetch from upstream, cache it, return it\n\n```\n\nYou configure upstreams in priority order. When a pull request comes in, the virtual registry checks each upstream until it finds the image. The result gets cached for a configurable period (default 24 hours).\n\n```text\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│                    CI/CD Pipeline                       │\n│                          │                              │\n│                          ▼                              │\n│   gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/\u003Cid>/image   │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n                           │\n                           ▼\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│            Container Virtual Registry                   │\n│                                                         │\n│  Upstream 1: Docker Hub ────────────────┐               │\n│  Upstream 2: dhi.io (Hardened) ────────┐│               │\n│  Upstream 3: MCR ─────────────────────┐││               │\n│  Upstream 4: Quay.io ────────────────┐│││               │\n│                                      ││││               │\n│                    ┌─────────────────┴┴┴┴──┐            │\n│                    │        Cache          │            │\n│                    │  (manifests + layers) │            │\n│                    └───────────────────────┘            │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n```\n\n## Why this matters for Docker Hardened Images\n\n[Docker Hardened Images](https://docs.docker.com/dhi/) are great because of the minimal attack surface, near-zero CVEs, proper software bills of materials (SBOMs), and SLSA provenance. If you're evaluating base images for security-sensitive workloads, they should be on your list.\n\nBut adopting them creates the same operational friction as any new registry:\n\n* **Credential distribution**: You need to get Docker credentials to every system that pulls images from dhi.io.\n* **CI/CD changes**: Every pipeline needs to be updated to authenticate with dhi.io.\n* **Developer friction**: People need to remember to use the hardened variants.\n* **Visibility gap**: It's difficulat to tell if teams are actually using hardened images vs. regular ones.\n\nVirtual registry addresses each of these:\n\n**Single credential**: Teams authenticate to GitLab. The virtual registry handles upstream authentication. You configure Docker credentials once, at the registry level, and they apply to all pulls.\n\n**No CI/CD changes per-team**: Point pipelines at your virtual registry. Done. The upstream configuration is centralized.\n\n**Gradual adoption**: Since images get cached with their full path, you can see in the cache what's being pulled. If someone's pulling `library/python:3.11` instead of the hardened variant, you'll know.\n\n**Audit trail**: The cache shows you exactly which images are in active use. Useful for compliance, useful for understanding what your fleet actually depends on.\n\n## Setting it up\n\nHere's a real setup using the Python client from this demo project.\n\n### Create the virtual registry\n\n```python\nfrom virtual_registry_client import VirtualRegistryClient\n\nclient = VirtualRegistryClient()\n\nregistry = client.create_virtual_registry(\n    group_id=\"785414\",  # Your top-level group ID\n    name=\"platform-images\",\n    description=\"Cached container images for platform teams\"\n)\n\nprint(f\"Registry ID: {registry['id']}\")\n# You'll need this ID for the pull URL\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hub as an upstream\n\nFor official images like Alpine, Python, etc.:\n\n```python\ndocker_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://registry-1.docker.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hub\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io)\n\nDocker Hardened Images are hosted on `dhi.io`, a separate registry that requires authentication:\n\n```python\ndhi_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-docker-username\",\n    password=\"your-docker-access-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add other upstreams\n\n```python\n# MCR for .NET teams\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://mcr.microsoft.com\",\n    name=\"Microsoft Container Registry\",\n    cache_validity_hours=48\n)\n\n# Quay for Red Hat stuff\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://quay.io\",\n    name=\"Quay.io\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Update your CI/CD\n\nHere's a `.gitlab-ci.yml` that pulls through the virtual registry:\n\n```yaml\nvariables:\n  VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID: \u003Cyour_virtual_registry_ID>\n\n  \nbuild:\n  image: docker:24\n  services:\n    - docker:24-dind\n  before_script:\n    # Authenticate to GitLab (which handles upstream auth for you)\n    - echo \"${CI_JOB_TOKEN}\" | docker login -u gitlab-ci-token --password-stdin gitlab.com\n  script:\n    # All of these go through your single virtual registry\n    \n    # Official Docker Hub images (use library/ prefix)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/library/alpine:latest\n    \n    # Docker Hardened Images from dhi.io (no prefix needed)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/python:3.13\n    \n    # .NET from MCR\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/dotnet/sdk:8.0\n```\n\n### Image path formats\n\nDifferent registries use different path conventions:\n\n| Registry | Pull URL Example |\n|----------|------------------|\n| Docker Hub (official) | `.../library/python:3.11-slim` |\n| Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io) | `.../python:3.13` |\n| MCR | `.../dotnet/sdk:8.0` |\n| Quay.io | `.../prometheus/prometheus:latest` |\n\n### Verify it's working\n\nAfter some pulls, check your cache:\n\n```python\nupstreams = client.list_registry_upstreams(registry['id'])\nfor upstream in upstreams:\n    entries = client.list_cache_entries(upstream['id'])\n    print(f\"{upstream['name']}: {len(entries)} cached entries\")\n\n```\n\n## What the numbers look like\n\nI ran tests pulling images through the virtual registry:\n\n| Metric | Without Cache | With Warm Cache |\n|--------|---------------|-----------------|\n| Pull time (Alpine) | 10.3s | 4.2s |\n| Pull time (Python 3.13 DHI) | 11.6s | ~4s |\n| Network roundtrips to upstream | Every pull | Cache misses only |\n\n\n\n\nThe first pull is the same speed (it has to fetch from upstream). Every pull after that, for the cache validity period, comes straight from GitLab's storage. No network hop to Docker Hub, dhi.io, MCR, or wherever the image lives.\n\nFor a team running hundreds of pipeline jobs per day, that's hours of cumulative build time saved.\n\n## Practical considerations\nHere are some considerations to keep in mind:\n\n### Cache validity\n\n24 hours is the default. For security-sensitive images where you want patches quickly, consider 12 hours or less:\n\n```python\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-username\",\n    password=\"your-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=12\n)\n```\n\nFor stable, infrequently-updated images (like specific version tags), longer validity is fine.\n\n### Upstream priority\n\nUpstreams are checked in order. If you have images with the same name on different registries, the first matching upstream wins.\n\n### Limits\n\n* Maximum of 20 virtual registries per group\n* Maximum of 20 upstreams per virtual registry\n\n## Configuration via UI\n\nYou can also configure virtual registries and upstreams directly from the GitLab UI—no API calls required. Navigate to your group's **Settings > Packages and registries > Virtual Registry** to:\n\n* Create and manage virtual registries\n* Add, edit, and reorder upstream registries\n* View and manage the cache\n* Monitor which images are being pulled\n\n## What's next\n\nWe're actively developing:\n\n* **Allow/deny lists**: Use regex to control which images can be pulled from specific upstreams.\n\nThis is beta software. It works, people are using it in production, but we're still iterating based on feedback.\n\n## Share your feedback\n\nIf you're a platform engineer dealing with container registry sprawl, I'd like to understand your setup:\n\n* How many upstream registries are you managing?\n* What's your biggest pain point with the current state?\n* Would something like this help, and if not, what's missing?\n\nPlease share your experiences in the [Container Virtual Registry feedback issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/589630).\n## Related resources\n- [New GitLab metrics and registry features help reduce CI/CD bottlenecks](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/new-gitlab-metrics-and-registry-features-help-reduce-ci-cd-bottlenecks/#container-virtual-registry)\n- [Container Virtual Registry documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/)\n- [Container Virtual Registry API](https://docs.gitlab.com/api/container_virtual_registries/)",[743,744,30],"tutorial","product",{"featured":14,"template":15,"slug":746},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":748,"config":758},{"title":749,"description":750,"authors":751,"heroImage":753,"date":754,"category":11,"tags":755,"body":757},"How IIT Bombay students are coding the future with GitLab","At GitLab, we often talk about how software accelerates innovation. But sometimes, you have to step away from the Zoom calls and stand in a crowded university hall to remember why we do this.",[752],"Nick Veenhof","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099013/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2814%29_6VTUA8mUhOZNDaRVNPeKwl_1750099012960.png","2026-01-08",[267,616,756],"open source","The GitLab team recently had the privilege of judging the **iHack Hackathon** at **IIT Bombay's E-Summit**. The energy was electric, the coffee was flowing, and the talent was undeniable. But what struck us most wasn't just the code — it was the sheer determination of students to solve real-world problems, often overcoming significant logistical and financial hurdles to simply be in the room.\n\n\nThrough our [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we aim to empower the next generation of developers with tools and opportunity. Here is a look at what the students built, and how they used GitLab to bridge the gap between idea and reality.\n\n## The challenge: Build faster, build securely\n\nThe premise for the GitLab track of the hackathon was simple: Don't just show us a product; show us how you built it. We wanted to see how students utilized GitLab's platform — from Issue Boards to CI/CD pipelines — to accelerate the development lifecycle.\n\nThe results were inspiring.\n\n## The winners\n\n### 1st place: Team Decode — Democratizing Scientific Research\n\n**Project:** FIRE (Fast Integrated Research Environment)\n\nTeam Decode took home the top prize with a solution that warms a developer's heart: a local-first, blazing-fast data processing tool built with [Rust](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/secure-rust-development-with-gitlab/) and Tauri. They identified a massive pain point for data science students: existing tools are fragmented, slow, and expensive.\n\nTheir solution, FIRE, allows researchers to visualize complex formats (like NetCDF) instantly. What impressed the judges most was their \"hacker\" ethos. They didn't just build a tool; they built it to be open and accessible.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** Since the team lived far apart, asynchronous communication was key. They utilized **GitLab Issue Boards** and **Milestones** to track progress and integrated their repo with Telegram to get real-time push notifications. As one team member noted, \"Coordinating all these technologies was really difficult, and what helped us was GitLab... the Issue Board really helped us track who was doing what.\"\n\n![Team Decode](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/epqazj1jc5c7zkgqun9h.jpg)\n\n### 2nd place: Team BichdeHueDost — Reuniting to Solve Payments\n\n**Project:** SemiPay (RFID Cashless Payment for Schools)\n\nThe team name, BichdeHueDost, translates to \"Friends who have been set apart.\" It's a fitting name for a group of friends who went to different colleges but reunited to build this project. They tackled a unique problem: handling cash in schools for young children. Their solution used RFID cards backed by a blockchain ledger to ensure secure, cashless transactions for students.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** They utilized [GitLab CI/CD](https://about.gitlab.com/topics/ci-cd/) to automate the build process for their Flutter application (APK), ensuring that every commit resulted in a testable artifact. This allowed them to iterate quickly despite the \"flaky\" nature of cross-platform mobile development.\n\n![Team BichdeHueDost](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/pkukrjgx2miukb6nrj5g.jpg)\n\n### 3rd place: Team ZenYukti — Agentic Repository Intelligence\n\n**Project:** RepoInsight AI (AI-powered, GitLab-native intelligence platform)\n\nTeam ZenYukti impressed us with a solution that tackles a universal developer pain point: understanding unfamiliar codebases. What stood out to the judges was the tool's practical approach to onboarding and code comprehension: RepoInsight-AI automatically generates documentation, visualizes repository structure, and even helps identify bugs, all while maintaining context about the entire codebase.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** The team built a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline that showcased GitLab's security and DevOps capabilities. They integrated [GitLab's Security Templates](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/tree/master/lib/gitlab/ci/templates/Security) (SAST, Dependency Scanning, and Secret Detection), and utilized [GitLab Container Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/container_registry/) to manage their Docker images for backend and frontend components. They created an AI auto-review bot that runs on merge requests, demonstrating an \"agentic workflow\" where AI assists in the development process itself.\n\n![Team ZenYukti](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/ymlzqoruv5al1secatba.jpg)\n\n## Beyond the code: A lesson in inclusion\n\nWhile the code was impressive, the most powerful moment of the event happened away from the keyboard.\n\nDuring the feedback session, we learned about the journey Team ZenYukti took to get to Mumbai. They traveled over 24 hours, covering nearly 1,800 kilometers. Because flights were too expensive and trains were booked, they traveled in the \"General Coach,\" a non-reserved, severely overcrowded carriage.\n\nAs one student described it:\n\n*\"You cannot even imagine something like this... there are no seats... people sit on the top of the train. This is what we have endured.\"*\n\nThis hit home. [Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/) are core values at GitLab. We realized that for these students, the barrier to entry wasn't intellect or skill, it was access.\n\nIn that moment, we decided to break that barrier. We committed to reimbursing the travel expenses for the participants who struggled to get there. It's a small step, but it underlines a massive truth: **talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not.**\n\n![hackathon class together](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380252/o5aqmboquz8ehusxvgom.jpg)\n\n### The future is bright (and automated)\n\nWe also saw incredible potential in teams like Prometheus, who attempted to build an autonomous patch remediation tool (DevGuardian), and Team Arrakis, who built a voice-first job portal for blue-collar workers using [GitLab Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo/) to troubleshoot their pipelines.\n\nTo all the students who participated: You are the future. Through [GitLab for Education](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we are committed to providing you with the top-tier tools (like GitLab Ultimate) you need to learn, collaborate, and change the world — whether you are coding from a dorm room, a lab, or a train carriage. **Keep shipping.**\n\n> :bulb: Learn more about the [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/).\n",{"slug":759,"featured":14,"template":15},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":761,"config":769},{"title":762,"description":763,"authors":764,"heroImage":765,"date":766,"category":11,"tags":767,"body":768},"Artois University elevates research and curriculum with GitLab Ultimate for Education","Artois University's CRIL leveraged the GitLab for Education program to gain free access to Ultimate, transforming advanced research and computer science curricula.",[752],"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099203/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2820%29_2bJGC5ZP3WheoqzlLT05C5_1750099203484.png","2025-12-10",[616,267,744],"Leading academic institutions face a critical challenge: how to provide thousands of students and researchers with industry-standard, **full-featured DevSecOps tools** without compromising institutional control. Many start with basic version control, but the modern curriculum demands integrated capabilities for planning, security, and advanced CI/CD.\n\nThe **GitLab for Education program** is designed to solve this by providing access to **GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying institutions, allowing them to scale their operations and elevate their academic offerings. \n\nThis article showcases a powerful success story from the **Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Lens (CRIL)**, a joint laboratory of **Artois University** and CNRS in France. After years of relying solely on GitLab Community Edition (CE), the university's move to GitLab Ultimate through the GitLab for Education program immediately unlocked advanced capabilities, transforming their teaching, research, and contribution workflows virtually overnight. This story demonstrates why GitLab Ultimate is essential for institutions seeking to deliver advanced computer science and research curricula.\n\n## GitLab Ultimate unlocked: Managing scale and driving academic value\n\n**Artois University's** self-managed GitLab instance is a large-scale operation, supporting nearly **3,000 users** across approximately **19,000 projects**, primarily serving computer science students and researchers. While GitLab Community Edition was robust, the upgrade to GitLab Ultimate provided the sophisticated tooling necessary for managing this scale and facilitating advanced university-level work.\n\n***\"We can see the difference,\" says Daniel Le Berre, head of research at CRIL and the instance maintainer. \"It's a completely different product. Each week reveals new features that directly enhance our productivity and teaching.\"***\n\nThe institution joined the GitLab for Education program specifically because it covers both **instructional and non-commercial research use cases** and offers full access to Ultimate's features, removing significant cost barriers.\n\n### Key GitLab Ultimate benefits for students and researchers\n\n* **Advanced project management at scale:** Master's students now benefit from **GitLab Ultimate's project planning features**. This enables them to structure, track, and manage complex, long-term research projects using professional methodologies like portfolio management and advanced issue tracking that seamlessly roll up across their thousands of projects.\n\n* **Enhanced visibility:** Features like improved dashboards and code previews directly in Markdown files dramatically streamline tracking and documentation review, reducing administrative friction for both instructors and students managing large project loads.\n\n## Comprehensive curriculum: From concepts to continuous delivery\n\nGitLab Ultimate is deeply integrated into the computer science curriculum, moving students beyond simple `git` commands to practical **DevSecOps implementation**.\n\n* **Git fundamentals:** Students begin by visualizing concepts using open-source tools to master Git concepts.\n\n* **Full CI/CD implementation:** Students use GitLab CI for rigorous **Test-Driven Development (TDD)** in their software projects. They learn to build, test, and perform quality assurance using unit and integration testing pipelines—core competency made seamless by the integrated platform.\n\n* **DevSecOps for research and documentation:** The university teaches students that DevSecOps principles are vital for all collaborative work. Inspired by earlier work in Delft, students manage and produce critical research documentation (PDFs from Markdown files) using GitLab, incorporating quality checks like linters and spell checks directly in the CI pipeline. This ensures high-quality, reproducible research output.\n\n* **Future-proofing security skills:** The GitLab Ultimate platform immediately positions the institution to incorporate advanced DevSecOps features like SAST and DAST scanning as their research and development code projects grow, ensuring students are prepared for industry security standards.\n\n## Accelerating open source contributions with GitLab Duo\n\nAccess to the full GitLab platform, including our AI capabilities, has empowered students to make impactful contributions to the wider open source community faster than ever before.\n\nTwo Master's students recently completed direct contributions to the GitLab product, adding the **ORCID identifier** into user profiles. Working on GitLab.com, they leveraged **GitLab Duo's AI chat and code suggestions** to navigate the codebase efficiently.\n\n***\"This would not have been possible without GitLab Duo,\" Daniel Le Berre notes. \"The AI features helped students, who might have lacked deep codebase knowledge, deliver meaningful contributions in just two weeks.\"***\n\nThis demonstrates how providing students with cutting-edge tools **accelerates their learning and impact**, allowing them to translate classroom knowledge into real-world contributions immediately.\n\n## Empowering open research and institutional control\n\nThe stability of the self-managed instance at Artois University is key to its success. This model guarantees **institutional control and stability** — a critical factor for long-term research preservation.\n\nThe institution's expertise in this area was recently highlighted in a major 2024 study led by CRIL, titled: \"[Higher Education and Research Forges in France - Definition, uses, limitations encountered and needs analysis](https://hal.science/hal-04208924v4)\" ([Project on GitLab](https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/coso-college-codes-sources-et-logiciels/forges-esr-en)). The research found that the vast majority of public forges in French Higher Education and Research relied on **GitLab**. This finding underscores the consensus among academic leaders that self-hosted solutions are essential for **data control and longevity**, especially when compared to relying on external, commercial forges.\n\n## Unlock GitLab Ultimate for your institution today\n\nThe success story of **Artois University's CRIL** proves the transformative power of the GitLab for Education program. By providing **free access to GitLab Ultimate**, we enable large-scale institutions to:\n\n1.  **Deliver a modern, integrated DevSecOps curriculum.**\n\n2.  **Support advanced, collaborative research projects with Ultimate planning features.**\n\n3.  **Empower students to make AI-assisted open source contributions.**\n\n4.  **Maintain institutional control and data longevity.**\n\nIf your academic institution is ready to equip its students and researchers with the complete DevSecOps platform and its most advanced features, we invite you to join the program.\n\nThe program provides **free access to GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying instructional and non-commercial research use cases.\n\n**Apply now [online](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/).**\n",{"slug":770,"featured":33,"template":15},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":772},[773,787,798],{"id":774,"categories":775,"header":777,"text":778,"button":779,"image":784},"ai-modernization",[776],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":780,"config":781},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":782,"dataGaName":783,"dataGaLocation":249},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":785},{"src":786},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":788,"categories":789,"header":790,"text":778,"button":791,"image":795},"devops-modernization",[744,43],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":792,"config":793},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":794,"dataGaName":783,"dataGaLocation":249},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":796},{"src":797},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":799,"categories":800,"header":802,"text":778,"button":803,"image":807},"security-modernization",[801],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":804,"config":805},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":806,"dataGaName":783,"dataGaLocation":249},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":808},{"src":809},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":811,"blurb":812,"button":813,"secondaryButton":818},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":814,"config":815},"Get your free trial",{"href":816,"dataGaName":56,"dataGaLocation":817},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":501,"config":819},{"href":60,"dataGaName":61,"dataGaLocation":817},1773350815718]