Terraform module for GitLab auto scaling runners on Spot instances

This repo contains a terraform module and example to run a GitLab CI multi runner on AWS Spot instances. See the blog post at 040code for a detailed description of the setup.

The setup is based on the blog post: Auto scale GitLab CI runners and save 90% on EC2 costs The created runner will have by default a shared cache in S3 and logging is streamed to CloudWatch. The cache in S3 will expire in X days, see configuration. The logging can be disabled.

Besides the auto scaling option (docker+machine executor) the docker executor is supported as wel for a single node.

Prerequisites

Terraform

Ensure you have Terraform installed, see .terraform-version for the used version. A handy tool to mange your terraform version is tfenv.

On mac simple install tfenv using brew.

brew install tfenv

Next install a terraform version.

tfenv install <version>

AWS

To run the terraform scripts you need to have AWS keys. Example file:

export AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=...
export AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=...

Service linked roles

The gitlab runner ec2 instance needs the following sercice linked roles:

• AWSServiceRoleForAutoScaling
• AWSServiceRoleForEC2Spot

By default the ec2 instance is allowed to create the roles, by setting the option allow_iam_service_linked_role_creation to false you can deny the creation of roles by the instance. In that case you have to ensure the roles exists. You can create them manually or via terraform.

resource "aws_iam_service_linked_role" "spot" {
  aws_service_name = "spot.amazonaws.com"
}

resource "aws_iam_service_linked_role" "autoscaling" {
  aws_service_name = "autoscaling.amazonaws.com"
}

Configuration GitLab runner token

Currently register a new runner is a manual process. See the GitLab Runner documentation for more details.

docker run -it --rm gitlab/gitlab-runner register

Provide the details in the interactive terminal. Once done the token can be found in the GitLab runners section, choose edit to get the token or see the config.toml file.

Usage

Configuration

Update the variables in terraform.tfvars to your needs and add the following variables, see previous step for how to obtain the token.

runner_name  = "NAME_OF_YOUR_RUNNER"
gitlab_url   = "GIT_LAB_URL"
runner_token  = "RUNNER_TOKEN"

The base image used to host the GitLab Runner agent is the latest available Amazon Linux HVM EBS AMI. In previous version of the module an hard coded list of AMI per region was available. This list is replaced by a search filter to find the latest AMI. By setting the filter for example to amzn-ami-hvm-2018.03.0.20180622-x86_64-ebs you can lock the version of the AMI.

Usage module.

module "gitlab-runner" {
  source = "npalm/gitlab-runner/aws"
  version = "1.0.0"

  aws_region              = "${var.aws_region}"
  environment             = "${var.environment}"
  ssh_public_key          = "${file("${var.ssh_key_file}")}"

  vpc_id                  = "${module.vpc.vpc_id}"
  subnet_ids_gitlab_runner = "${module.vpc.private_subnets}"
  subnet_id_runners       = "${element(module.vpc.private_subnets, 0)}"

  runners_name             = "${var.runner_name}"
  runners_gitlab_url       = "${var.gitlab_url}"
  runners_token            = "${var.runner_token}"

  # Optional
  runners_off_peak_timezone = "Europe/Amsterdam"
  runners_off_peak_periods  = "[\"* * 0-9,17-23 * * mon-fri *\", \"* * * * * sat,sun *\"]"
}

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
allow_iam_service_linked_role_creation	Attach policy to runner instance to create service linked roles.	string	true	no
ami_filter	AMI filter to select the AMI used to host the gitlab runner agent. By default the pattern amzn-ami-hvm-2018.03*-x86_64-ebs is used for the name. Currently Amazon Linux 2 amzn2-ami-hvm-2.0.????????-x86_64-ebs looks not working for this configuration.	list	<list>	no
ami_owners	A list of owners used to select the AMI for the instance.	list	<list>	no
aws_region	AWS region.	string	-	yes
aws_zone	AWS availability zone (typically 'a', 'b', or 'c').	string	a	no
cache_bucket_prefix	Prefix for s3 cache bucket name.	string	``	no
cache_expiration_days	Number of days before cache objects expires.	string	1	no
cache_shared	Enables cache sharing between runners, false by default.	string	false	no
create_runners_iam_instance_profile		string	true	no
docker_machine_instance_type	Instance type used for the instances hosting docker-machine.	string	m4.large	no
docker_machine_options	Additional to set options for docker machine. Each element of the list should be key and value. E.g. '["amazonec2-zone=a"]'	list	<list>	no
docker_machine_spot_price_bid	Spot price bid.	string	0.04	no
docker_machine_user	User name for the user to create spot instances to host docker-machine.	string	docker-machine	no
docker_machine_version	Version of docker-machine.	string	0.16.1	no
enable_cloudwatch_logging	Enable or disable the CloudWatch logging.	string	1	no
environment	A name that identifies the environment, will used as prefix and for tagging.	string	-	yes
gitlab_runner_version	Version for the gitlab runner.	string	11.8.0	no
instance_role_json	Instance role json for the runner agent ec2 instance to override the default.	string	``	no
instance_role_runner_json	Instance role json for the docker machine runners to override the default.	string	``	no
instance_type	Instance type used for the gitlab-runner.	string	t2.micro	no
runners_concurrent	Concurrent value for the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	10	no
runners_executor	The executor to use. Currently supports docker+machine or docker	string	docker+machine	no
runners_gitlab_url	URL of the gitlab instance to connect to.	string	-	yes
runners_iam_instance_profile_name	IAM instance profile name of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	``	no
runners_idle_count	Idle count of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	0	no
runners_idle_time	Idle time of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	600	no
runners_image	Image to run builds, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	docker:18.03.1-ce	no
runners_limit	Limit for the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	0	no
runners_monitoring	Enable detailed cloudwatch monitoring for spot instances.	string	false	no
runners_name	Name of the runner, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	-	yes
runners_off_peak_idle_count	Off peak idle count of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml.	string	0	no
runners_off_peak_idle_time	Off peak idle time of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml.	string	0	no
runners_off_peak_periods	Off peak periods of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml.	string	``	no
runners_off_peak_timezone	Off peak idle time zone of the runners, will be used in the runner config.toml.	string	``	no
runners_output_limit	Set maximum build log size in kilobytes, by default set to 4096 (4MB)	string	4096	no
runners_post_build_script	Commands to be executed on the Runner just after executing the build, but before executing after_script.	string	``	no
runners_pre_build_script	Script to execute in the pipeline just before the build, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	``	no
runners_pre_clone_script	Commands to be executed on the Runner before cloning the Git repository. this can be used to adjust the Git client configuration first, for example.	string	``	no
runners_privilled	Runners will run in privilled mode, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	true	no
runners_request_concurrency	Limit number of concurrent requests for new jobs from GitLab (default 1)	string	1	no
runners_root_size	Runnner instance root size in GB.	string	16	no
runners_token	Token for the runner, will be used in the runner config.toml	string	-	yes
runners_use_private_address	Restrict runners to use only private address	string	true	no
ssh_public_key	Public SSH key used for the gitlab-runner ec2 instance.	string	-	yes
subnet_id_runners	Subnet used to hosts the docker-machine runners.	string	-	yes
subnet_ids_gitlab_runner	Subnet used for hosting the gitlab-runner.	list	-	yes
tags	Map of tags that will be added to created resources. By default resources will be tagged with name and environnemnt.	map	<map>	no
userdata_post_install	User-data script snippet to insert after gitlab-runner install	string	``	no
userdata_pre_install	User-data script snippet to insert before gitlab-runner install	string	``	no
vpc_id	The VPC that is used for the instances.	string	-	yes

Outputs

Name	Description
runner_agent_role	ARN of the rule used for the ec2 instance for the GitLab runner agent.
runner_as_group_name	Name of the autoscaling group for the gitlab-runner instance
runner_cache_bucket_arn	ARN of the S3 for the build cache.

Example

An example is provided, execute the following steps to run the sample. Ensure your AWS and Terraform environment is set up correctly. All commands below are supposed to be run inside the directory example.

AWS keys

Keys are generated by terraform and stored in a directory generated in the example directory.

Configure GitLab

Register a new runner:

docker run -it --rm gitlab/gitlab-runner register

Once done, lookup the token in GitLab and update the terraform.tfvars file.

Create runner

Run terraform init to initialize terraform. Next you can run terraform plan to inspect the resources that will be created.

To create the runner run:

terraform apply

To destroy runner:

terraform destroy