How can we prepare GitLab runners using Ansible deploys

Question

Given

We run an in-house GitLab server, with many projects (aka "repositories")

We provision all servers using Ansible (and deploy projects using pip)

We deploy to

• dev.project.example.com
• test.project.example..com
• beta.project.example..com
• (and eventually to) www.project.example..com

When

We add .gitlab-ci-.yml to all projects' repository roots

We want to use dev.project.example.com as a runner for that GitLab project

Then

What Ansible playbooks could we write to provision dev.project.example.com as a GitLab Runner for that project?

Answer 1

A gitlab runner is a process that f.e. tests, compiles your project, pushes the artefact to you artefact store etc.

A Gitlab runner can be tagged inside Gitlab or via config.toml - so - you can assign runners via tags to Gitlab projects (shared).

Gitlab runner are not designed to run an application 24x7. So - you assign a project to a runner (or a tag or all) to build you application). If you want to deploy the project, use the K8S deployment inside Gitlab (that must be connected to a specific Kubernetes environment based on you Git-branches etc). Or (just an example) run an AWX task that is able to push your new artefact via the artefact storage (docker registry). Also you could just call a SSH remote command on a script (via Gitlab runner) to start a deployment - but don't use the runner to "host" your environment. They will stop (per default after 1h) without a return code.