[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":791},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times":3,"navigation-en-us":36,"banner-en-us":436,"footer-en-us":446,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Suri Patel":688,"blog-related-posts-en-us-strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times":702,"assessment-promotions-en-us":742,"next-steps-en-us":781},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":25,"isFeatured":12,"meta":26,"navigation":27,"path":28,"publishedDate":20,"seo":29,"stem":33,"tagSlugs":34,"__hash__":35},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times.yml","Strategies To Reduce Cycle Times",[7],"suri-patel",null,"engineering",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"10 strategies for cycle time reduction","Engineering leads share strategies on how to speed up cycle times.",[18],"Suri Patel","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749668437/Blog/Hero%20Images/faster-cycle-times.jpg","2018-10-12","\n\nEvery product manager appreciates shorter cycle times. One way to reduce cycle\ntimes is to learn from others, so five of our engineering leads share the greatest\nchallenges their teams have experienced and offer the strategies they developed\nto speed up iteration.\n\n>“The impact of shorter cycle times is that users can see the result of their\ninput quickly. Instead of contributing to the planning process and then waiting\nfor weeks to see the feature start to take shape, they can regularly see changes,\nmaking them happy and keeping them engaged with a team. This also helps reduce\nthe scope creep that happens when a project has been in progress for a while.” – Rachel Nienaber\n\n## What's the average cycle time for development teams?\n\nAccording to the [Accelerate State of DevOps Report](https://www.hatica.io/blog/cycle-time/#:~:text=The%20Accelerate%20State%20of%20DevOps,cycle%20time%20of%206.2%20days), the average cycle time for top-performing teams is about 2 days, with the median for most teams being about 3.5 days. However, some development teams [report their average cycle times](https://linearb.io/blog/how-to-reduce-cycle-time-in-software-delivery/) as being as much as 7 days. Teams can calculate this by evaluating how long several types of fixes take from start to finish.\n\n## What are some cycle time challenges?\n\nEvery team has processes and steps that increase cycle delivery time. A shorter and faster time to market empowers teams to fulfill customer demands and exceed their expectations. Here are a few of\nthe ones we’ve dealt with in recent past.\n\n### Getting it right the first time\n\nWhen developing new features, we want to ensure that things don’t break when it\ngets to a user. Because of our monthly release cycle, users could be stuck with\na broken feature until the following month, causing frustration and decreasing\nthe value that GitLab brings to its users. So, it’s important that we test and\nship with certainty. [Marin Jankovski](/company/team/#maxlazio), Engineering Manager of\nthe Distribution & Release Management teams, and [Sean McGivern](/company/team/#mcgivernsa),\nEngineering Manager of the Plan team, note the importance of testing and shipping features.\n\n\n>“Finding a way to test changes faster can be challenging. With the Distribution\nteam, we have the responsibility of ensuring that the release we ship still\nfunctions after we make our changes and that users can still install and use GitLab.”\n– Marin Jankovski\n\n>“Our release process is a big challenge, if you consider that the cycle ends\nonce customers have the feature available to use. We don’t have CD for\nGitLab.com, but even if we did, for self-managed customers, we only have one\nfeature release a month. So, that’s a hard limit.” – Sean McGivern\n\n### Differentiating the helpful from the unhelpful\n\nEvery workflow has components that can decrease release cycles, including code\nreviews, manual configuration and testing, and hand-offs. Some of these elements\nare necessary, like product manager meetings, but other aspects can unintentionally\ncause problems. [Tommy Morgan](/company/team/#itstommymorgan), Director of Engineering of\nDev Backend, highlights the essential measures that teams need to take to promote\ncollaboration and alignment but may increase cycle times.\n\n\n>“Teams have all these things that are slowing down cycle times, and there could\nbe extra steps or extra involvement that aren’t necessary or beneficial and that\ncould unintentionally add pressure to the team to slow down. One of the biggest\nchallenges is identifying which ones are legitimate and helpful and which ones\nare us giving into the natural urge to add process. Identifying across that fine\nline is where the real challenge comes into play for most teams.”\n\n### Working across teams\n\nCross-collaboration fosters innovative thinking and allows each team to specialize\nin a specific area to maximize contributions. While the benefits of working with\nmultiple teams are abundant, depending on another team’s feedback or assistance\nslows down development, especially when there’s a blocker that can only be resolved\nwith the help of one team. [Rachel Nienaber](/company/team/#rachel-nienaber), Engineering\nManager of the Geo team, and Marin agree that working across teams can have\nsignificant impact on cycle times.\n\n\n>“When other teams implement a new feature that needs some additional work from\nthe Distribution side, getting informed in time is extremely important. We need\nto affect the decision as early as possible, because we have certain limitations\nwhen it comes to distributing GitLab.” – Marin Jankovski\n\n>“One challenge that I see is that there are a lot of dependencies on people\nexternal to the team to ship features. Ordinarily, a quick way to shorten cycle\ntime is to reduce those dependencies, but here at GitLab, that may reduce the\namount of collaboration that happens with each feature. Collaboration is such an\nimportant [value](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#collaboration) that this may have to take\nprecedence in some cases and be more important than the gain in speed.” – Rachel Nienaber\n\n### Asynchronous communication\n\nAt GitLab, we practice [asynchronous communication](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/communication/),\nso we “don’t expect an instantaneous response,” allowing us to focus on our\nindividual workflows. The problem with working asynchronously is that projects\ncan become delayed when working with team members in different time zones and\nresponses don’t trickle in until the following day. Rapid movement might not be\nmade on projects because of time zone differences. [Mek Stittri](/company/team/#mekdev),\nEngineering Manager of the Quality team, and Rachel acknowledge the difficulties\nthat can come with asynchronous communication.\n\n>“My team is spread across so many projects and has someone in almost every time\nzone, meaning communication can be challenging.” – Mek Stittri\n\n>“This is my first role with an asynchronous method of working. I am finding that\nmany practices that work in a synchronous team need some adjustment to be useful here.” – Rachel Nienaber\n\n## What are some solutionsb to reducing cycle times?\n\nAt GitLab, we’re fortunate to have the freedom to experiment and\n[iterate](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration), so we’ve been able to develop a few\nstrategies to help us alleviate the challenges we face when meeting customer demands by reducing cycle times.\n\n### How to get it right the first time\n\n\u003Col start=\"1\">\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Automate work as much as possible.\u003C/b> Using CI to automatically do releases and investing time in automating\n        other manual tasks is crucial for delivery. Manual tasks are both a huge\n        drain on morale and prone to errors. It’s much easier to give engineers\n        a bug to fix in an automated tool than to ask them to do the same thing\n        multiple times.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Work with smaller, iterative pieces.\u003C/b> Breaking work into smaller chunks,\n        \u003Ca href=\"/handbook/values/#iteration\">iterating\u003C/a> frequently, and\n        \u003Ca href=\"https://gitlab.com/gl-retrospectives/plan/issues/10\">indicating priority more clearly\u003C/a>\n        within a milestone enables better predictability for what’s going to ship.\n        Planning becomes easier, because individual issues are smaller, so it’s\n        easy to shuffle issues around if something unexpected interrupts other\n        work.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Use feature flags.\u003C/b> Rather than using a giant merge request to make\n        every change for a feature at once, which is harder to review, update,\n        and keep up-to-date with the master branch, consider developing\n        more features behind short-lived \u003Ca href=\"https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/development/feature_flags/index.html\">feature flags\u003C/a>.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\u003C/ol>\n\n### How to differentiate the helpful from the unhelpful\n\n\u003Col start=\"4\">\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Measure the impact of components.\u003C/b> Measuring impact can help determine\n        whether a process either doesn’t help out that much in the end or helps\n        out infrequently. In either case, the net benefit can be small, but the\n        pain it adds (in terms of how much extra time you spend trying to ship)\n        makes the overall impact negative. If you can’t measure impact directly,\n        you have to be willing to experiment. Try things, see how they work, and\n        decide if you should keep them or not. It’s important to remember that\n        experimentation doesn’t mean process creep - the default end state for\n        an experiment should be “let’s never do that again,” unless there’s a\n        strong sense of value in it.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\u003C/ol>\n\n\n### How to successfully work across teams\n\n\u003Col start=\"5\">\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Communicate and automate where possible.\u003C/b> Automating how others get a\n        finished product before releasing it (e.g. create a package on click)\n        and \u003Ca href=\"https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/infrastructure-platforms/gitlab-delivery/distribution/#how-to-work-with-distribution\">broadly communicating\u003C/a>\n        how to work with a team can result in better decisions and faster discussions.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Develop a training program.\u003C/b> Creating a training program to help engineers\n        from other teams perform reviews can reduce cycle time for those teams\n        that regularly depend on the Database team. This strategy has the added\n        benefit of giving the Database team more time to focus on their own work.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Use project management tooling.\u003C/b> Consistent \u003Ca href=\"/handbook/engineering/quality/project-management/\">project management tooling\u003C/a>\n        ensures consistent board configuration that behaves the same at every level,\n        meaning that data rolls up to one top level board which contains a\n        snapshot of an entire team, ensuring that prioritization is clear and\n        workload is transparent.\n\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Spread triaging.\u003C/b> To spread the load of triaging across teams, use \u003Ca href=\"https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues?scope=all&utf8=%E2%9C%93&state=closed&label_name[]=triage-package\">triage-package\u003C/a>.\n        Here is a \u003Ca href=\"https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/52024\">recent example\u003C/a>\n        of how we used triage-package to lessen the burden on one team.\n\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Have more focused milestones.\u003C/b> Creating focused milestones can reduce\n        context switching, since team members can concentrate on specific aspects\n        of a feature.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\u003C/ol>\n\n### How to make asynchronous communication work\n\n\u003Col start=\"10\">\n    \u003Cli>\n    \u003Cp>\n        \u003Cb>Work on multiple items.\u003C/b> Having a list of multiple items to work on\n        during each release cycle helps team members easily transition to another\n        task rather than remaining blocked when waiting for feedback.\n    \u003C/p>\n    \u003C/li>\n\u003C/ol>\n\n## Advice\n\nReducing cycle times to meet internal cycle time goals can be a difficult undertaking, requiring the input from\nproduct managers, engineering leads, and developers. It’s a hard task to\nchallenge long-practiced behaviors, especially when the worst case scenario could\nmean features don’t make a release. Here is some advice to help your team's cycle time reduction effort.\n\n### Be thoughtful and considerate\n\n“At GitLab, we want to iterate quickly, but we also want to keep GitLab.com fast\nand stable. That means that we can’t just decide to ship things faster, we need\nto come up with strategies to mitigate any risks to performance and availability,\nbuild tooling and processes around those strategies. This is often work that can\ngo underappreciated, and it can be hard at times, but it’s vital to ensuring\nthat you can safely shorten cycle times.” – Sean McGivern\n\n### Retrospectives for learning\n\n“A successful team is a happy team. Bringing down production cycle time can help a team be\nmore successful because they are shipping value more often, but your team might\nhave more important things that must be addressed first. Using retrospectives\nwill help you to figure out what success means to your team, and what needs to\nbe done to achieve that success.” – Rachel Nienaber\n\n### Experiment\n\n“Make yourself uncomfortable. It’s unnatural to push for shorter cycle time.\nIt’s natural to add steps - it’s not natural to remove them. Try drastic cuts\nand be willing to learn from an experiment.” – Tommy Morgan\n\n### Spotlight your team\n\n“You can’t make product managers happy, so try to make your team happy instead\nby giving them a chance to shine. :P” – Marin Jankovski\n\n",[23,24],"workflow","collaboration","yml",{},true,"/en-us/blog/strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times",{"title":15,"description":16,"ogTitle":15,"ogDescription":16,"noIndex":12,"ogImage":19,"ogUrl":30,"ogSiteName":31,"ogType":32,"canonicalUrls":30},"https://about.gitlab.com/blog/strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times","https://about.gitlab.com","article","en-us/blog/strategies-to-reduce-cycle-times",[23,24],"12awhnsLxfpB4JJYRx-v2ZEYGCQhd-f6YChAdWS3lkQ",{"data":37},{"logo":38,"freeTrial":43,"sales":48,"login":53,"items":58,"search":366,"minimal":397,"duo":416,"pricingDeployment":426},{"config":39},{"href":40,"dataGaName":41,"dataGaLocation":42},"/","gitlab logo","header",{"text":44,"config":45},"Get free 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statement",{"items":678},[679,682,685],{"text":680,"config":681},"Terms",{"href":506,"dataGaName":507,"dataGaLocation":454},{"text":683,"config":684},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":516,"dataGaLocation":454,"id":517,"isOneTrustButton":27},{"text":686,"config":687},"Privacy",{"href":511,"dataGaName":512,"dataGaLocation":454},[689],{"id":690,"title":18,"body":8,"config":691,"content":693,"description":8,"extension":25,"meta":697,"navigation":27,"path":698,"seo":699,"stem":700,"__hash__":701},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/suri-patel.yml",{"template":692},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":694},{"headshot":695,"ctfId":696},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749659488/Blog/Author%20Headshots/gitlab-logo-extra-whitespace.png","suripatel",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/suri-patel",{},"en-us/blog/authors/suri-patel","6uYSrzx-VYqO5jfherOjew8qtD9VYm7TE1H5W0GKC4I",[703,718,731],{"content":704,"config":716},{"title":705,"description":706,"authors":707,"heroImage":709,"date":710,"body":711,"category":9,"tags":712},"How to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[708],"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/)",[713,714,715],"tutorial","product","features",{"featured":12,"template":13,"slug":717},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":719,"config":729},{"title":720,"description":721,"authors":722,"heroImage":724,"date":725,"category":9,"tags":726,"body":728},"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.",[723],"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",[258,610,727],"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":730,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":732,"config":740},{"title":733,"description":734,"authors":735,"heroImage":736,"date":737,"category":9,"tags":738,"body":739},"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.",[723],"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",[610,258,714],"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":741,"featured":27,"template":13},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":743},[744,758,769],{"id":745,"categories":746,"header":748,"text":749,"button":750,"image":755},"ai-modernization",[747],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":751,"config":752},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":753,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":240},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":756},{"src":757},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":759,"categories":760,"header":761,"text":749,"button":762,"image":766},"devops-modernization",[714,556],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":763,"config":764},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":765,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":240},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":767},{"src":768},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":770,"categories":771,"header":773,"text":749,"button":774,"image":778},"security-modernization",[772],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":775,"config":776},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":777,"dataGaName":754,"dataGaLocation":240},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":779},{"src":780},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":782,"blurb":783,"button":784,"secondaryButton":789},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":785,"config":786},"Get your free trial",{"href":787,"dataGaName":47,"dataGaLocation":788},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":492,"config":790},{"href":51,"dataGaName":52,"dataGaLocation":788},1773350847022]