[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":797},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration":3,"navigation-en-us":42,"banner-en-us":442,"footer-en-us":452,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Andrew Newdigate":694,"blog-related-posts-en-us-gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration":708,"assessment-promotions-en-us":748,"next-steps-en-us":787},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":29,"isFeatured":12,"meta":30,"navigation":31,"path":32,"publishedDate":20,"seo":33,"stem":37,"tagSlugs":38,"__hash__":41},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration.yml","Gitlab Com Stability Post Gcp Migration",[7],"andrew-newdigate",null,"engineering",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"What's up with GitLab.com? Check out the latest data on its stability","Let's take a look at the data on the stability of GitLab.com from before and after our recent migration from Azure to GCP, and dive into why things are looking up.",[18],"Andrew Newdigate","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749671280/Blog/Hero%20Images/gitlab-gke-integration-cover.png","2018-10-11","This post is inspired by [this comment on\nReddit](https://www.reddit.com/r/gitlab/comments/9f71nq/thanks_gitlab_team_for_improving_the_stability_of/), thanking us for improving the stability of GitLab.com. Thanks, hardwaresofton! Making GitLab.com ready for your mission-critical workloads has been top of mind for us for some time, and it's great to hear that users are noticing a difference.\n\n_Please note that the numbers in this post differ slightly from the Reddit post as the data has changed since that post._\n\nWe will continue to work hard on improving the availability and stability of the platform. Our current goal is to achieve 99.95 percent availability on GitLab.com – look out for an upcoming post about how we're planning to get there.\n\n## GitLab.com stability before and after the migration\n\nAccording to [Pingdom](http://stats.pingdom.com/81vpf8jyr1h9), GitLab.com's availability for the year to date, up until the migration was **[99.68 percent](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=527563485&range=F2)**, which equates to about 32 minutes of downtime per week on average.\n\nSince the migration, our availability has improved greatly, although we have much less data to compare with than in Azure.\n\n![Availability Chart](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQg_tdtdZYoC870W3u2R2icSK0Rd9qoOtDJqYHALaQlzhxXOmfY63X1NMMyFVEypQs7NngR4UUIZx5R/pubchart?oid=458170195&format=image)\n\nUsing data publicly available from Pingdom, here are some stats about our availability for the year to date:\n\n| Period | Mean-time between outage events |\n| --- | --- |\n| Pre-migration (Azure) | **1.3 days** |\n| Post-migration (GCP) | **7.3 days** |\n| Post-migration (GCP) excluding 1st day | **12 days** |\n\nThis is great news: we're experiencing outages less frequently. What does this mean for our availability, and are we on track to achieve our goal of 99.95 percent?\n\n| Period | Availability | Downtime per week |\n| --- | --- | --- |\n| Pre-migration (Azure) | **[99.68%](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=527563485&range=F2)** | **32 minutes** |\n| Post-migration (GCP) | **[99.88%](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=527563485&range=B3)** | **13 minutes** |\n| Target - not yet achieved | **99.95%** | **5 minutes** |\n\nDropping from 32 minutes per week average downtime to 13 minutes per week means we've experienced a **61 percent improvement** in our availability following our migration to Google Cloud Platform.\n\n## Performance\n\nWhat about the performance of GitLab.com since the migration?\n\nPerformance can be tricky to measure. In particular, averages are a terrible way of measuring performance, since they neglect outlying values. One of the better ways to measure performance is with a latency histogram chart. To do this, we imported the GitLab.com access logs for July (for Azure) and\nSeptember (for Google Cloud Platform) into [Google\nBigQuery](https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/), then selected the 100 most popular endpoints for each month and categorised these as either API, web, git, long-polling, or static endpoints. Comparing these histograms side-by-side allows us to study how the performance of GitLab.com has changed since the migration.\n\n![GitLab.com Latency\nHistogram](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/whats-up-with-gitlab-com/azure_v_gcp_latencies.gif)\n\nIn this histogram, higher values on the left indicate better performance.\nThe right of the graph is the \"_tail_\", and the \"_fatter the tail_\", the worse the user experience.\n\nThis graph shows us that with the move to GCP, more requests are completing within a satisfactory amount of time.\n\nHere's two more graphs showing the difference for API and Git requests respectively.\n\n![API Latency\nHistogram](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/whats-up-with-gitlab-com/api-performance-histogram.png)\n\n![Git Latency\nHistogram](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/whats-up-with-gitlab-com/git-performance-histogram.png)\n\n## Why these improvements?\n\nWe chose Google Cloud Platform because we believe that Google offer the most reliable cloud platform for our workload, particularly as we move towards running GitLab.com in [Kubernetes](/solutions/kubernetes/).\n\nHowever, there are many other reasons unrelated to our change in cloud provider for these improvements to stability and performance.\n\n> #### _“We chose Google Cloud Platform because we believe that Google offer\nthe most reliable cloud platform for our workload”_\n\nLike any large SaaS site, GitLab.com is a large, complicated system, and attributing availability changes to individual changes is extremely difficult, but here are a few factors which may be effecting our availability and performance:\n\n### Reason #1: Our Gitaly Fleet on GCP is much more powerful than before\n\nGitaly is responsible for all Git access in the GitLab application. Before\nGitaly, Git access occurred directly from within Rails workers. Because of the scale we run at, we require many servers serving the web application, and therefore, in order to share git data between all workers, we relied on\nNFS volumes. Unfortunately this approach doesn't scale well, which led to us building Gitaly, a dedicated Git service.\n\n> #### _“We've opted to give our fleet of 24 Gitaly servers a serious\nupgrade”_\n\n#### Our upgraded Gitaly fleet\n\nAs part of the migration, we've opted to give our fleet of 24 [Gitaly](/blog/the-road-to-gitaly-1-0/) servers a serious upgrade. If the old fleet was the equivalent of a nice family sedan, the new fleet are like a pack of snarling musclecars, ready to serve your Git objects.\n\n| Environment | Processor | Number of cores per instance | RAM per instance |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Azure | Intel Xeon Ivy Bridge @ 2.40GHz | 8 | 55GB |\n| GCP | Intel Xeon Haswell @ 2.30GHz | **32** | **118GB** |\n\nOur new Gitaly fleet is much more powerful. This means that Gitaly can respond to requests more quickly, and deal better with unexpected traffic surges.\n\n#### IO performance\n\nAs you can probably imagine, serving [225TB of Git data](https://dashboards.gitlab.com/d/ZwfWfY2iz/vanity-metrics-dashboard?orgId=1)\nto roughly half-a-million active users a week is a fairly IO-heavy operation. Any performance improvements we can make to this will have a big impact on the overall performance of GitLab.com.\n\nFor this reason, we've focused on improving performance here too.\n\n| Environment | RAID | Volumes | Media | filesystem | Performance |\n| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |\n| Azure | RAID 5 (lvm) | 16 | magnetic | xfs | 5k IOPS, 200MB/s (_per disk_) / 32k IOPS **1280MB/s** (_volume group_) |\n| GCP | No raid | 1 | **SSD** | ext4 | **60k read IOPs**, 30k write IOPs, 800MB/s read 200MB/s write |\n\nHow does this translate into real-world performance? Here are average read and write times across our Gitaly fleet:\n\n##### IO performance is much higher\n\nHere are some comparative figures for our Gitaly fleet from Azure and GCP.\nIn each case, the performance in GCP is much better than in Azure, although this is what we would expect given the more powerful fleet.\n\n[![Disk read time graph](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQg_tdtdZYoC870W3u2R2icSK0Rd9qoOtDJqYHALaQlzhxXOmfY63X1NMMyFVEypQs7NngR4UUIZx5R/pubchart?oid=458168633&format=image)](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=1002437172)\n[![Disk write time graph](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQg_tdtdZYoC870W3u2R2icSK0Rd9qoOtDJqYHALaQlzhxXOmfY63X1NMMyFVEypQs7NngR4UUIZx5R/pubchart?oid=884528549&format=image)](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=1002437172)\n[![Disk Queue length graph](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vQg_tdtdZYoC870W3u2R2icSK0Rd9qoOtDJqYHALaQlzhxXOmfY63X1NMMyFVEypQs7NngR4UUIZx5R/pubchart?oid=2135164979&format=image)](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uJ_zacNvJTsvJUfNpi1D_aPBg-vNJC1xJzsSwGKKt8g/edit#gid=1002437172)\n\nNote: For reference: for Azure, this uses the average times for the week leading up to the failover. For GCP, it's an average for the week up to\nOctober 2, 2018.\n\nThese stats clearly illustrate that our new fleet has far better IO performance than our old cluster. Gitaly performance is highly dependent on\nIO performance, so this is great news and goes a long way to explaining the performance improvements we're seeing.\n\n### Reason #2: Fewer \"unicorn worker saturation\" errors\n\n![HTTP 503 Status\nGitLab](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/whats-up-with-gitlab-com/facepalm-503.png)\n\nUnicorn worker saturation sounds like it'd be a good thing, but it's really not!\n\nWe ([currently](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/merge_requests/1899))\nrely on [unicorn](https://bogomips.org/unicorn/), a Ruby/Rack http server, for serving much of the application. Unicorn uses a single-threaded model, which uses a fixed pool of workers processes. Each worker can handle only one request at a time. If the worker gives no response within 60 seconds, it is terminated and another process is spawned to replace it.\n\n> #### _“Unicorn worker saturation sounds like it'd be a good thing, but\nit's really not!”_\n\nAdd to this the lack of autoscaling technologies to ramp the fleet up when we experience high load volumes, and this means that GitLab.com has a relatively static-sized pool of workers to handle incoming requests.\n\nIf a Gitaly server experiences load problems, even fast [RPCs](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remote_procedure_call) that would normally only take milliseconds, could take up to several seconds to respond\n– thousands of times slower than usual. Requests to the unicorn fleet that communicate with the slow server will take hundreds of times longer than expected. Eventually, most of the fleet is handling requests to that affected backend server. This leads to a queue which affects all incoming traffic, a bit like a tailback on a busy highway caused by a traffic jam on a single offramp.\n\nIf the request gets queued for too long – after about 60 seconds – the request will be cancelled, leading to a 503 error. This is indiscriminate – all requests, whether they interact with the affected server or not, will get cancelled. This is what I call unicorn worker saturation, and it's a very bad thing.\n\nBetween February and August this year we frequently experienced this phenomenon.\n\nThere are several approaches we've taken to dealing with this:\n\n- **Fail fast with aggressive timeouts and circuitbreakers**: Timeouts mean\nthat when a Gitaly request is expected to take a few milliseconds, they time out after a second, rather than waiting for the request to time out after 60 seconds. While some requests will still be affected, the cluster will remain generally healthy. Gitaly currently doesn't use circuitbreakers, but we plan to add this, possibly using [Istio](https://istio.io/docs/tasks/traffic-management/circuit-breaking/)\nonce we've moved to Kubernetes.\n\n- **Better abuse detection and limits**: More often than not, server load\nspikes are driven by users going against our fair usage policies. We built tools to better detect this and over the past few months, an abuse team has been established to deal with this. Sometimes, load is driven through huge repositories, and we're working on reinstating fair-usage limits which prevent 100GB Git repositories from affecting our entire fleet.\n\n- **Concurrency controls and rate limits**: For limiting the blast radius,\nrate limiters (mostly in HAProxy) and concurrency limiters (in Gitaly) slow overzealous users down to protect the fleet as a whole.\n\n### Reason #3: GitLab.com no longer uses NFS for any Git access\n\nIn early September we disabled Git NFS mounts across our worker fleet. This was possible because Gitaly had reached v1.0: the point at which it's sufficiently complete. You can read more about how we got to this stage in our [Road to Gitaly blog post](/blog/the-road-to-gitaly-1-0/).\n\n### Reason #4: Migration as a chance to reduce debt\n\nThe migration was a fantastic opportunity for us to improve our infrastructure, simplify some components, and otherwise make GitLab.com more stable and more observable, for example, we've rolled out new **structured logging infrastructure**.\n\nAs part of the migration, we took the opportunity to move much of our logging across to structured logs. We use [fluentd](https://www.fluentd.org/), [Google\nPub/Sub](https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/docs/overview), [Pubsubbeat](https://github.com/GoogleCloudPlatform/pubsubbeat), storing our logs in [Elastic Cloud](https://www.elastic.co/cloud) and [Google\nStackdriver Logging](https://cloud.google.com/logging/). Having reliable, indexed logs has allowed us to reduce our mean-time to detection of incidents, and in particular detect abuse. This new logging infrastructure has also been invaluable in detecting and resolving several security incidents.\n\n> #### _“This new logging infrastructure has also been invaluable in\ndetecting and resolving several security incidents”_\n\nWe've also focused on making our staging environment much more similar to our production environment. This allows us to test more changes, more accurately, in staging before rolling them out to production. Previously the team was maintaining a limited scaled-down staging environment and many changes were not adequately tested before being rolled out. Our environments now share a common configuration and we're working to automate all [terraform](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/infrastructure/issues/5079)\nand [chef](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/gl-infra/infrastructure/issues/5078)\nrollouts.\n\n### Reason #5: Process changes\n\nUnfortunately many of the worst outages we've experienced over the past few years have been self-inflicted. We've always been transparent about these — and will continue to be so — but as we rapidly grow, it's important that our processes scale alongside our systems and team.\n\n> #### _“It's important that our processes scale alongside our systems and\nteam”_\n\nIn order to address this, over the past few months, we've formalized our change and incident management processes. These processes respectively help us to avoid outages and resolve them quicker when they do occur.\n\nIf you're interested in finding out more about the approach we've taken to these two vital disciplines, they're published in our handbook:\n\n- [GitLab.com's Change Management\nProcess](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/infrastructure/change-management/)\n\n- [GitLab.com's Incident Management\nProcess](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/infrastructure/incident-management/)\n\n### Reason #6: Application improvement\n\nEvery GitLab release includes [performance and stability improvements](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&state=opened&label_name%5B%5D=performance); some of these have had a big impact on GitLab's stability and performance, particularly n+1 issues.\n\nTake Gitaly for example: like other distributed systems, Gitaly can suffer from a class of performance degradations known as \"n+1\" problems. This happens when an endpoint needs to make many queries (_\"n\"_) to fulfill a single request.\n\n> Consider an imaginary endpoint which queried Gitaly for all tags on a\nrepository, and then issued an additional query for each tag to obtain more information. This would result in n + 1 Gitaly queries: one for the initial tag, and then n for the tags. This approach would work fine for a project with 10 tags – issuing 11 requests, but a project with 1000 tags, this would result in 1001 Gitaly calls, each with a round-trip time, and issued in sequence.\n\n![Latency drop in Gitaly endpoints](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/whats-up-with-gitlab-com/drop-off.png)\n\nUsing data from Pingdom, this chart shows long-term performance trends since the start of the year. It's clear that latency improved a great deal on May 7, 2018. This date happens to coincide with the RC1 release of GitLab 10.8, and its deployment on GitLab.com.\n\nIt turns out that this was due to a [single fix on n+1 on the merge request page being resolved](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/44052).\n\nWhen running in development or test mode, GitLab now detects n+1 situations and we have compiled [a list of known n+1s](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=opened&label_name[]=performance&label_name[]=Gitaly&label_name[]=technical%20debt).\nAs these are resolved we expect even more performance improvements.\n\n![GitLab Summit - South Africa - 2018](https://about.gitlab.com/images/summits/2018_south-africa_team.jpg)\n\n### Reason #7: Infrastructure team growth and reorganization\n\nAt the start of May 2018, the Infrastructure team responsible for GitLab.com consisted of five engineers.\n\nSince then, we've had a new director join the Infrastructure team, two new managers, a specialist [Postgres\nDBRE](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/13778), and four new [SREs](https://handbook.gitlab.com/job-families/engineering/infrastructure/site-reliability-engineer/).\nThe database team has been reorganized to be an embedded part of infrastructure group. We've also brought in [Ongres](https://www.ongres.com/), a specialist Postgres consultancy, to work alongside the team.\n\nHaving enough people in the team has allowed us to be able to split time between on-call, tactical improvements, and longer-term strategic work.\n\nOh, and we're still hiring! If you're interested, check out [our open positions](/jobs/) and choose the Infrastructure Team 😀\n\n## TL;DR: Conclusion\n\n1. GitLab.com is more stable: availability has improved 61 percent since we\nmigrated to GCP\n\n1. GitLab.com is faster: latency has improved since the migration\n\n1. We are totally focused on continuing these improvements, and we're\nbuilding a great team to do it\n\nOne last thing: our Grafana dashboards are open, so if you're interested in digging into our metrics in more detail, visit [dashboards.gitlab.com](https://dashboards.gitlab.com) and explore!\n",[23,24,25,26,27,28],"GKE","google","inside GitLab","kubernetes","news","performance","yml",{},true,"/en-us/blog/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration",{"title":15,"description":16,"ogTitle":15,"ogDescription":16,"noIndex":12,"ogImage":19,"ogUrl":34,"ogSiteName":35,"ogType":36,"canonicalUrls":34},"https://about.gitlab.com/blog/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration","https://about.gitlab.com","article","en-us/blog/gitlab-com-stability-post-gcp-migration",[39,24,40,26,27,28],"gke","inside-gitlab","LufpEtjX7V2gUvq2jMb86J1rMisp5zpZ3SM_RBSrUPg",{"data":43},{"logo":44,"freeTrial":49,"sales":54,"login":59,"items":64,"search":372,"minimal":403,"duo":422,"pricingDeployment":432},{"config":45},{"href":46,"dataGaName":47,"dataGaLocation":48},"/","gitlab logo","header",{"text":50,"config":51},"Get free trial",{"href":52,"dataGaName":53,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_source=about.gitlab.com&glm_content=default-saas-trial/","free trial",{"text":55,"config":56},"Talk to sales",{"href":57,"dataGaName":58,"dataGaLocation":48},"/sales/","sales",{"text":60,"config":61},"Sign in",{"href":62,"dataGaName":63,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://gitlab.com/users/sign_in/","sign in",[65,92,187,192,293,353],{"text":66,"config":67,"cards":69},"Platform",{"dataNavLevelOne":68},"platform",[70,76,84],{"title":66,"description":71,"link":72},"The intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps",{"text":73,"config":74},"Explore our Platform",{"href":75,"dataGaName":68,"dataGaLocation":48},"/platform/",{"title":77,"description":78,"link":79},"GitLab Duo Agent Platform","Agentic AI for the entire software lifecycle",{"text":80,"config":81},"Meet GitLab Duo",{"href":82,"dataGaName":83,"dataGaLocation":48},"/gitlab-duo-agent-platform/","gitlab duo agent platform",{"title":85,"description":86,"link":87},"Why GitLab","See the top reasons enterprises choose GitLab",{"text":88,"config":89},"Learn more",{"href":90,"dataGaName":91,"dataGaLocation":48},"/why-gitlab/","why gitlab",{"text":93,"left":31,"config":94,"link":96,"lists":100,"footer":169},"Product",{"dataNavLevelOne":95},"solutions",{"text":97,"config":98},"View all Solutions",{"href":99,"dataGaName":95,"dataGaLocation":48},"/solutions/",[101,125,148],{"title":102,"description":103,"link":104,"items":109},"Automation","CI/CD and automation to accelerate deployment",{"config":105},{"icon":106,"href":107,"dataGaName":108,"dataGaLocation":48},"AutomatedCodeAlt","/solutions/delivery-automation/","automated software delivery",[110,114,117,121],{"text":111,"config":112},"CI/CD",{"href":113,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":111},"/solutions/continuous-integration/",{"text":77,"config":115},{"href":82,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":116},"gitlab duo agent platform - product menu",{"text":118,"config":119},"Source Code Management",{"href":120,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":118},"/solutions/source-code-management/",{"text":122,"config":123},"Automated Software Delivery",{"href":107,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":124},"Automated software delivery",{"title":126,"description":127,"link":128,"items":133},"Security","Deliver code faster without compromising security",{"config":129},{"href":130,"dataGaName":131,"dataGaLocation":48,"icon":132},"/solutions/application-security-testing/","security and compliance","ShieldCheckLight",[134,138,143],{"text":135,"config":136},"Application Security Testing",{"href":130,"dataGaName":137,"dataGaLocation":48},"Application security testing",{"text":139,"config":140},"Software Supply Chain Security",{"href":141,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":142},"/solutions/supply-chain/","Software supply chain security",{"text":144,"config":145},"Software Compliance",{"href":146,"dataGaName":147,"dataGaLocation":48},"/solutions/software-compliance/","software compliance",{"title":149,"link":150,"items":155},"Measurement",{"config":151},{"icon":152,"href":153,"dataGaName":154,"dataGaLocation":48},"DigitalTransformation","/solutions/visibility-measurement/","visibility and measurement",[156,160,164],{"text":157,"config":158},"Visibility & Measurement",{"href":153,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":159},"Visibility and Measurement",{"text":161,"config":162},"Value Stream Management",{"href":163,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":161},"/solutions/value-stream-management/",{"text":165,"config":166},"Analytics & Insights",{"href":167,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":168},"/solutions/analytics-and-insights/","Analytics and insights",{"title":170,"items":171},"GitLab for",[172,177,182],{"text":173,"config":174},"Enterprise",{"href":175,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":176},"/enterprise/","enterprise",{"text":178,"config":179},"Small Business",{"href":180,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":181},"/small-business/","small business",{"text":183,"config":184},"Public Sector",{"href":185,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":186},"/solutions/public-sector/","public sector",{"text":188,"config":189},"Pricing",{"href":190,"dataGaName":191,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataNavLevelOne":191},"/pricing/","pricing",{"text":193,"config":194,"link":196,"lists":200,"feature":280},"Resources",{"dataNavLevelOne":195},"resources",{"text":197,"config":198},"View all resources",{"href":199,"dataGaName":195,"dataGaLocation":48},"/resources/",[201,234,252],{"title":202,"items":203},"Getting started",[204,209,214,219,224,229],{"text":205,"config":206},"Install",{"href":207,"dataGaName":208,"dataGaLocation":48},"/install/","install",{"text":210,"config":211},"Quick start guides",{"href":212,"dataGaName":213,"dataGaLocation":48},"/get-started/","quick setup checklists",{"text":215,"config":216},"Learn",{"href":217,"dataGaLocation":48,"dataGaName":218},"https://university.gitlab.com/","learn",{"text":220,"config":221},"Product documentation",{"href":222,"dataGaName":223,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://docs.gitlab.com/","product documentation",{"text":225,"config":226},"Best practice videos",{"href":227,"dataGaName":228,"dataGaLocation":48},"/getting-started-videos/","best practice videos",{"text":230,"config":231},"Integrations",{"href":232,"dataGaName":233,"dataGaLocation":48},"/integrations/","integrations",{"title":235,"items":236},"Discover",[237,242,247],{"text":238,"config":239},"Customer success stories",{"href":240,"dataGaName":241,"dataGaLocation":48},"/customers/","customer success stories",{"text":243,"config":244},"Blog",{"href":245,"dataGaName":246,"dataGaLocation":48},"/blog/","blog",{"text":248,"config":249},"Remote",{"href":250,"dataGaName":251,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/all-remote/","remote",{"title":253,"items":254},"Connect",[255,260,265,270,275],{"text":256,"config":257},"GitLab Services",{"href":258,"dataGaName":259,"dataGaLocation":48},"/services/","services",{"text":261,"config":262},"Community",{"href":263,"dataGaName":264,"dataGaLocation":48},"/community/","community",{"text":266,"config":267},"Forum",{"href":268,"dataGaName":269,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://forum.gitlab.com/","forum",{"text":271,"config":272},"Events",{"href":273,"dataGaName":274,"dataGaLocation":48},"/events/","events",{"text":276,"config":277},"Partners",{"href":278,"dataGaName":279,"dataGaLocation":48},"/partners/","partners",{"backgroundColor":281,"textColor":282,"text":283,"image":284,"link":288},"#2f2a6b","#fff","Insights for the future of software development",{"altText":285,"config":286},"the source promo card",{"src":287},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1758208064/dzl0dbift9xdizyelkk4.svg",{"text":289,"config":290},"Read the latest",{"href":291,"dataGaName":292,"dataGaLocation":48},"/the-source/","the source",{"text":294,"config":295,"lists":297},"Company",{"dataNavLevelOne":296},"company",[298],{"items":299},[300,305,311,313,318,323,328,333,338,343,348],{"text":301,"config":302},"About",{"href":303,"dataGaName":304,"dataGaLocation":48},"/company/","about",{"text":306,"config":307,"footerGa":310},"Jobs",{"href":308,"dataGaName":309,"dataGaLocation":48},"/jobs/","jobs",{"dataGaName":309},{"text":271,"config":312},{"href":273,"dataGaName":274,"dataGaLocation":48},{"text":314,"config":315},"Leadership",{"href":316,"dataGaName":317,"dataGaLocation":48},"/company/team/e-group/","leadership",{"text":319,"config":320},"Team",{"href":321,"dataGaName":322,"dataGaLocation":48},"/company/team/","team",{"text":324,"config":325},"Handbook",{"href":326,"dataGaName":327,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://handbook.gitlab.com/","handbook",{"text":329,"config":330},"Investor relations",{"href":331,"dataGaName":332,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://ir.gitlab.com/","investor relations",{"text":334,"config":335},"Trust Center",{"href":336,"dataGaName":337,"dataGaLocation":48},"/security/","trust center",{"text":339,"config":340},"AI Transparency Center",{"href":341,"dataGaName":342,"dataGaLocation":48},"/ai-transparency-center/","ai transparency center",{"text":344,"config":345},"Newsletter",{"href":346,"dataGaName":347,"dataGaLocation":48},"/company/contact/#contact-forms","newsletter",{"text":349,"config":350},"Press",{"href":351,"dataGaName":352,"dataGaLocation":48},"/press/","press",{"text":354,"config":355,"lists":356},"Contact us",{"dataNavLevelOne":296},[357],{"items":358},[359,362,367],{"text":55,"config":360},{"href":57,"dataGaName":361,"dataGaLocation":48},"talk to sales",{"text":363,"config":364},"Support portal",{"href":365,"dataGaName":366,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://support.gitlab.com","support portal",{"text":368,"config":369},"Customer portal",{"href":370,"dataGaName":371,"dataGaLocation":48},"https://customers.gitlab.com/customers/sign_in/","customer portal",{"close":373,"login":374,"suggestions":381},"Close",{"text":375,"link":376},"To search repositories and projects, login to",{"text":377,"config":378},"gitlab.com",{"href":62,"dataGaName":379,"dataGaLocation":380},"search login","search",{"text":382,"default":383},"Suggestions",[384,386,390,392,396,400],{"text":77,"config":385},{"href":82,"dataGaName":77,"dataGaLocation":380},{"text":387,"config":388},"Code Suggestions (AI)",{"href":389,"dataGaName":387,"dataGaLocation":380},"/solutions/code-suggestions/",{"text":111,"config":391},{"href":113,"dataGaName":111,"dataGaLocation":380},{"text":393,"config":394},"GitLab on AWS",{"href":395,"dataGaName":393,"dataGaLocation":380},"/partners/technology-partners/aws/",{"text":397,"config":398},"GitLab on Google Cloud",{"href":399,"dataGaName":397,"dataGaLocation":380},"/partners/technology-partners/google-cloud-platform/",{"text":401,"config":402},"Why GitLab?",{"href":90,"dataGaName":401,"dataGaLocation":380},{"freeTrial":404,"mobileIcon":409,"desktopIcon":414,"secondaryButton":417},{"text":405,"config":406},"Start free trial",{"href":407,"dataGaName":53,"dataGaLocation":408},"https://gitlab.com/-/trials/new/","nav",{"altText":410,"config":411},"Gitlab Icon",{"src":412,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1758203874/jypbw1jx72aexsoohd7x.svg","gitlab icon",{"altText":410,"config":415},{"src":416,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1758203875/gs4c8p8opsgvflgkswz9.svg",{"text":418,"config":419},"Get Started",{"href":420,"dataGaName":421,"dataGaLocation":408},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_source=about.gitlab.com/get-started/","get started",{"freeTrial":423,"mobileIcon":428,"desktopIcon":430},{"text":424,"config":425},"Learn more about GitLab Duo",{"href":426,"dataGaName":427,"dataGaLocation":408},"/gitlab-duo/","gitlab duo",{"altText":410,"config":429},{"src":412,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},{"altText":410,"config":431},{"src":416,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},{"freeTrial":433,"mobileIcon":438,"desktopIcon":440},{"text":434,"config":435},"Back to pricing",{"href":190,"dataGaName":436,"dataGaLocation":408,"icon":437},"back to pricing","GoBack",{"altText":410,"config":439},{"src":412,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},{"altText":410,"config":441},{"src":416,"dataGaName":413,"dataGaLocation":408},{"title":443,"button":444,"config":449},"See how agentic AI transforms software delivery",{"text":445,"config":446},"Watch GitLab Transcend now",{"href":447,"dataGaName":448,"dataGaLocation":48},"/events/transcend/virtual/","transcend event",{"layout":450,"icon":451},"release","AiStar",{"data":453},{"text":454,"source":455,"edit":461,"contribute":466,"config":471,"items":476,"minimal":683},"Git is a trademark of Software Freedom Conservancy and our use of 'GitLab' is under license",{"text":456,"config":457},"View page source",{"href":458,"dataGaName":459,"dataGaLocation":460},"https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/digital-experience/about-gitlab-com/","page source","footer",{"text":462,"config":463},"Edit this page",{"href":464,"dataGaName":465,"dataGaLocation":460},"https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/digital-experience/about-gitlab-com/-/blob/main/content/","web ide",{"text":467,"config":468},"Please contribute",{"href":469,"dataGaName":470,"dataGaLocation":460},"https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/digital-experience/about-gitlab-com/-/blob/main/CONTRIBUTING.md/","please contribute",{"twitter":472,"facebook":473,"youtube":474,"linkedin":475},"https://twitter.com/gitlab","https://www.facebook.com/gitlab","https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnMGQ8QHMAnVIsI3xJrihhg","https://www.linkedin.com/company/gitlab-com",[477,524,578,622,649],{"title":188,"links":478,"subMenu":493},[479,483,488],{"text":480,"config":481},"View plans",{"href":190,"dataGaName":482,"dataGaLocation":460},"view plans",{"text":484,"config":485},"Why Premium?",{"href":486,"dataGaName":487,"dataGaLocation":460},"/pricing/premium/","why premium",{"text":489,"config":490},"Why Ultimate?",{"href":491,"dataGaName":492,"dataGaLocation":460},"/pricing/ultimate/","why ultimate",[494],{"title":495,"links":496},"Contact Us",[497,500,502,504,509,514,519],{"text":498,"config":499},"Contact sales",{"href":57,"dataGaName":58,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":363,"config":501},{"href":365,"dataGaName":366,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":368,"config":503},{"href":370,"dataGaName":371,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":505,"config":506},"Status",{"href":507,"dataGaName":508,"dataGaLocation":460},"https://status.gitlab.com/","status",{"text":510,"config":511},"Terms of use",{"href":512,"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":460},"/terms/","terms of use",{"text":515,"config":516},"Privacy statement",{"href":517,"dataGaName":518,"dataGaLocation":460},"/privacy/","privacy statement",{"text":520,"config":521},"Cookie preferences",{"dataGaName":522,"dataGaLocation":460,"id":523,"isOneTrustButton":31},"cookie preferences","ot-sdk-btn",{"title":93,"links":525,"subMenu":534},[526,530],{"text":527,"config":528},"DevSecOps platform",{"href":75,"dataGaName":529,"dataGaLocation":460},"devsecops platform",{"text":531,"config":532},"AI-Assisted Development",{"href":426,"dataGaName":533,"dataGaLocation":460},"ai-assisted development",[535],{"title":536,"links":537},"Topics",[538,543,548,553,558,563,568,573],{"text":539,"config":540},"CICD",{"href":541,"dataGaName":542,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/ci-cd/","cicd",{"text":544,"config":545},"GitOps",{"href":546,"dataGaName":547,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/gitops/","gitops",{"text":549,"config":550},"DevOps",{"href":551,"dataGaName":552,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/devops/","devops",{"text":554,"config":555},"Version Control",{"href":556,"dataGaName":557,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/version-control/","version control",{"text":559,"config":560},"DevSecOps",{"href":561,"dataGaName":562,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/devsecops/","devsecops",{"text":564,"config":565},"Cloud Native",{"href":566,"dataGaName":567,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/cloud-native/","cloud native",{"text":569,"config":570},"AI for Coding",{"href":571,"dataGaName":572,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/devops/ai-for-coding/","ai for coding",{"text":574,"config":575},"Agentic AI",{"href":576,"dataGaName":577,"dataGaLocation":460},"/topics/agentic-ai/","agentic ai",{"title":579,"links":580},"Solutions",[581,583,585,590,594,597,601,604,606,609,612,617],{"text":135,"config":582},{"href":130,"dataGaName":135,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":124,"config":584},{"href":107,"dataGaName":108,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":586,"config":587},"Agile development",{"href":588,"dataGaName":589,"dataGaLocation":460},"/solutions/agile-delivery/","agile delivery",{"text":591,"config":592},"SCM",{"href":120,"dataGaName":593,"dataGaLocation":460},"source code management",{"text":539,"config":595},{"href":113,"dataGaName":596,"dataGaLocation":460},"continuous integration & delivery",{"text":598,"config":599},"Value stream management",{"href":163,"dataGaName":600,"dataGaLocation":460},"value stream management",{"text":544,"config":602},{"href":603,"dataGaName":547,"dataGaLocation":460},"/solutions/gitops/",{"text":173,"config":605},{"href":175,"dataGaName":176,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":607,"config":608},"Small business",{"href":180,"dataGaName":181,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":610,"config":611},"Public sector",{"href":185,"dataGaName":186,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":613,"config":614},"Education",{"href":615,"dataGaName":616,"dataGaLocation":460},"/solutions/education/","education",{"text":618,"config":619},"Financial services",{"href":620,"dataGaName":621,"dataGaLocation":460},"/solutions/finance/","financial services",{"title":193,"links":623},[624,626,628,630,633,635,637,639,641,643,645,647],{"text":205,"config":625},{"href":207,"dataGaName":208,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":210,"config":627},{"href":212,"dataGaName":213,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":215,"config":629},{"href":217,"dataGaName":218,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":220,"config":631},{"href":222,"dataGaName":632,"dataGaLocation":460},"docs",{"text":243,"config":634},{"href":245,"dataGaName":246,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":238,"config":636},{"href":240,"dataGaName":241,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":248,"config":638},{"href":250,"dataGaName":251,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":256,"config":640},{"href":258,"dataGaName":259,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":261,"config":642},{"href":263,"dataGaName":264,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":266,"config":644},{"href":268,"dataGaName":269,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":271,"config":646},{"href":273,"dataGaName":274,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":276,"config":648},{"href":278,"dataGaName":279,"dataGaLocation":460},{"title":294,"links":650},[651,653,655,657,659,661,663,667,672,674,676,678],{"text":301,"config":652},{"href":303,"dataGaName":296,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":306,"config":654},{"href":308,"dataGaName":309,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":314,"config":656},{"href":316,"dataGaName":317,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":319,"config":658},{"href":321,"dataGaName":322,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":324,"config":660},{"href":326,"dataGaName":327,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":329,"config":662},{"href":331,"dataGaName":332,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":664,"config":665},"Sustainability",{"href":666,"dataGaName":664,"dataGaLocation":460},"/sustainability/",{"text":668,"config":669},"Diversity, inclusion and belonging (DIB)",{"href":670,"dataGaName":671,"dataGaLocation":460},"/diversity-inclusion-belonging/","Diversity, inclusion and belonging",{"text":334,"config":673},{"href":336,"dataGaName":337,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":344,"config":675},{"href":346,"dataGaName":347,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":349,"config":677},{"href":351,"dataGaName":352,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":679,"config":680},"Modern Slavery Transparency Statement",{"href":681,"dataGaName":682,"dataGaLocation":460},"https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/legal/modern-slavery-act-transparency-statement/","modern slavery transparency statement",{"items":684},[685,688,691],{"text":686,"config":687},"Terms",{"href":512,"dataGaName":513,"dataGaLocation":460},{"text":689,"config":690},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":522,"dataGaLocation":460,"id":523,"isOneTrustButton":31},{"text":692,"config":693},"Privacy",{"href":517,"dataGaName":518,"dataGaLocation":460},[695],{"id":696,"title":18,"body":8,"config":697,"content":699,"description":8,"extension":29,"meta":703,"navigation":31,"path":704,"seo":705,"stem":706,"__hash__":707},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/andrew-newdigate.yml",{"template":698},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":700},{"headshot":701,"ctfId":702},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749670199/Blog/Author%20Headshots/andrewn-headshot.jpg","andrewn",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/andrew-newdigate",{},"en-us/blog/authors/andrew-newdigate","T_TbXElfi2h-0oHIT5B0iOQQVcjp2x-eIuiKLfhbDBQ",[709,724,737],{"content":710,"config":722},{"title":711,"description":712,"authors":713,"heroImage":715,"date":716,"body":717,"category":9,"tags":718},"How to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[714],"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/)",[719,720,721],"tutorial","product","features",{"featured":12,"template":13,"slug":723},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":725,"config":735},{"title":726,"description":727,"authors":728,"heroImage":730,"date":731,"category":9,"tags":732,"body":734},"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.",[729],"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",[264,616,733],"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":736,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":738,"config":746},{"title":739,"description":740,"authors":741,"heroImage":742,"date":743,"category":9,"tags":744,"body":745},"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.",[729],"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",[616,264,720],"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":747,"featured":31,"template":13},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":749},[750,764,775],{"id":751,"categories":752,"header":754,"text":755,"button":756,"image":761},"ai-modernization",[753],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":757,"config":758},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":759,"dataGaName":760,"dataGaLocation":246},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":762},{"src":763},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":765,"categories":766,"header":767,"text":755,"button":768,"image":772},"devops-modernization",[720,562],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":769,"config":770},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":771,"dataGaName":760,"dataGaLocation":246},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":773},{"src":774},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":776,"categories":777,"header":779,"text":755,"button":780,"image":784},"security-modernization",[778],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":781,"config":782},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":783,"dataGaName":760,"dataGaLocation":246},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":785},{"src":786},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":788,"blurb":789,"button":790,"secondaryButton":795},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":791,"config":792},"Get your free trial",{"href":793,"dataGaName":53,"dataGaLocation":794},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":498,"config":796},{"href":57,"dataGaName":58,"dataGaLocation":794},1773350809245]