DevSecOps

Migrating from Docker Machine to Scale Runners in GitLab.com

Friday, May 12, 2023
A pretty exciting look into the future of CI job scaling at GitLab is taking shape and it’s clear they’re tackling some long-standing infrastructure pain points. Currently, GitLab uses Docker Machine to spin up ephemeral runners, which works… but comes with several limitations. Docker Machine is essentially in maintenance mode, and its abstraction layer can be clunky and inconsistent across different cloud providers. For large-scale CI/CD systems, that means reliability, speed, and fine-grained control are compromised, none of which are ideal in a fast-moving dev environment. ...