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New: Autoscale GitLab CI/CD on Spot Instances With Spotinst’s Elastigroup

Spotinst now offers a new service that enables you to integrate their Elastigroup to GitLab CI/CD.

spotinst gitlab ci

That means you can enjoy 3 benefits:

  1. Save money on Spot instances you install on AWS (Amazon Web Services) EC2. You can save up to 80% by using Spotinst (read below what Spot instances are)
  2. High availability that Spotinst Elastigroup provides, even for spot instances (Spotinst provides up to 100% availability)
  3. All benefits of using the advanced features of GitLab CI/CD tool (which is part of GitLab solution. GitLab CI/CD was recently ranked as the #1 CI tool by Forrester research group as you can read here)

Even if you use GitHub or Bitbucket you can enjoy all 3 benefits mentioned above!
Starting with GitLab v10.6 (03/22/2018), GitLab CI/CD can function as an independent tool – which means it can be integrated with any git -based SCM tools such as GitHub and Bitbucket.

How does it work?

GitLab, which provides a single application for the complete DevOps lifecycle on top of git, also offers an advanced CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) system that’s seamlessly integrated with git, git repos, software development processes, Docker containers and Kubernetes.

That CI/CD system can be distributed on machines which are called Runner hosts, and relevant CI/CD tasks are performed on those hosts (e.g. builds, compilation and tests).

Runners can be installed in many different ways – some of them are intended to support containers (such as Docker). One of those ways enables autoscaling of Docker on top of AWS. Spotinst has now created a new Runner instance that provides their Elastigroup features (giving you both the cost savings of Spot instances and the high availability that Elastigroup provides).

How does Spotinst work?

Spotinst company enables you to set up spot instance machines at low costs in the AWS and Azure clouds, without compromising the availability of the machines! The company’s solutions allow up to 100% availability of machines and up to 80% savings on monthly payments.

You can use those machines to run containers (including Kubernetes, ECS, Docker Swarm) and serverless functions.
We (ALMtoolbox) represent both Spotinst’s solutions and GitLab’s solutions worldwide, so you can ask us any questions about them both.

We also had the chance to assist Spotinst’s engineers and share some insights as a company that has helped customers to set up development environments based on GitLab, Bitbucket, GitHub and Jenkins.

 

 

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