Cells

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  • Offering: GitLab.com
  • Status: Experiment

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This feature is available for administrators of GitLab.com only. This feature is not available for GitLab Self-Managed or GitLab Dedicated instances.

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Cells 1.0 is in development. For more information about the state of cell development, see epic 12383.

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This page explains how to configure the GitLab Rails console for cell functionality. For more information on the proposed design and terminology, see the design document for Cells.

Configuration

To configure your GitLab instance as a Cell instance:

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The cells related configuration in config/gitlab.yml is in this format: 

  cell:
    enabled: true
    id: 1
    database:
      skip_sequence_alteration: false
    topology_service_client:
      address: topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443
      ca_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-ca.pem
      certificate_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-cert.pem
      private_key_file: /home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-key.pem

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  1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb and add the following lines: 

    gitlab_rails['cell'] = {
  enabled: true,
  id: 1,
  database: {
    skip_sequence_alteration: false
  },
  topology_service_client: {
    enabled: true,
    address: 'topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443',
    ca_file: 'path/to/your/ca/.pem',
    certificate_file: 'path/to/your/cert/.pem',
    private_key_file: 'path/to/your/key/.pem'
  }
}

  2. Reconfigure and restart GitLab: 

    sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo gitlab-ctl restart

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  1. Edit gitlab_values.yaml: 

    global:
  appConfig:
    cell:
      enabled: true
      id: 1
      database:
        skipSequenceAlteration: false
      topologyServiceClient:
        address: "topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443"
        caFile: "path/to/your/ca/.pem"
        privateKeyFile: "path/to/your/key/.pem"
        certificateFile: "path/to/your/certificate/.pem"

  2. Save the file and apply the new values: 

    helm upgrade -f gitlab_values.yaml gitlab gitlab/gitlab

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Configuration Default value Description
cell.enabled false To configure whether the instance is a Cell or not. false means all Cell features are disabled. session_cookie_prefix_token is not affected, and can be set separately.
cell.id nil Required to be a positive integer when cell.enabled is true. Otherwise, it must be nil. This is the unique integer identifier for the cell in a cluster. This ID is used inside the routable tokens. When cell.id is nil, the other attributes inside the routable tokens, like organization_id will still be used
cell.database.skip_sequence_alteration false When true, skips database sequence alteration for the cell. Enable for the legacy cell (cell-1) before the monolith cell is available for use, being tracked in this epic: Phase 6: Monolith Cell.
cell.topology_service_client.address "topology-service.gitlab.example.com:443" Required when cell.enabled is true. Address and port of the topology service server.
cell.topology_service_client.ca_file "/home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-ca.pem" Path to the CA certificate file for secure communication. This is not used at the moment.
cell.topology_service_client.certificate_file "/home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-cert.pem" Path to the client certificate file. This is not used at the moment.
cell.topology_service_client.private_key_file "/home/git/gitlab/config/topology-service-key.pem" Path to the private key file. This is not used at the moment.

For information on how to configure other components of the cells architecture, see:

  1. Topology service configuration
  2. HTTP router configuration