GitlabCi deploy on multiple servers

Question

I use Gitlab runner and works fine for a single server. The gitlab-ci.yml is simple:

stages:
  - test
  - deploy

test:
  stage: test
  image: php
  tags:
      - docker
  script:
      - echo "Run tests..."
deploy:
    stage: deploy
    tags:
      - shell
    script:
      - sh deploy.sh

As i said this is fine for a single server but to deploy same app on another server? I tried with same gitlab-runner config (same conf.toml) but then it was only updating one of them randomly.

Is there somehow gitlab Ci to be triggered by more than 1 runner and deploy all of them according gitlab-ci.yml?

score 10 · Accepted Answer · answered Jul 25 '16 at 06:12

You can register several runners (e.g. tagged serverA and serverB) from different servers and have multiple deployment jobs, each of them performed by a different runner. This is because you can set more than one tag in a job and only a runner having all the tags will be used.

stages:
  - test
  - deploy

test:
  stage: test
  image: php
  tags:
      - docker
  script:
      - echo "Run tests..."

deployA:
    stage: deploy
    tags:
      - shell
      - serverA
    script:
      - sh deploy.sh

deployB:
    stage: deploy
    tags:
      - shell
      - serverB
    script:
      - sh deploy.sh

However, take into account a situation when one of the deployment jobs fails - this would end up in you having two different versions of the code on the servers. Depending on your situation this might or might not be a problem.

yes also this could be a problem in case you use auto scaling and you are not aware of how many servers you have up and their info — Nick Doulgeridis, Jul 25 '16 at 10:12
If it's a problem then you should avoid this. Have only one deployment job and use a tool that will do the deployment to multiple servers. — tmt, Jul 25 '16 at 13:47

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 25 '16 at 06:12

Yes there is, just set up two jobs for the same stage:

stages:
  - deploy

deploy:one:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "Hello CI one"

deploy:two:
  stage: deploy
  script:
    - echo "Hello CI two"

If necessary you can use tags on your runners to choose which one to use.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 25 '21 at 00:21

Since 2016, you now have Environments and deployments

Environments describe where code is deployed.

Each time GitLab CI/CD deploys a version of code to an environment, a deployment is created.

GitLab:

Provides a full history of deployments to each environment.

Tracks your deployments, so you always know what is deployed on your servers.

It does integrates well with Prometheis, and, with GitLab 13.11 (April 2021), you even have:

Update a deploy freeze period in the UI

In GitLab 13.2, we added the ability to create a deploy freeze period in the project’s CI/CD settings.

This capability helps teams avoid unintentional deployments, reduce uncertainty, and mitigate deployment risks.

However, it was not possible to update deploy freezes.

In GitLab 13.11, we are adding the ability to edit an existing deploy freeze. This way, you can update the freeze period to match your business needs.

See Documentation and Issue.

As shown in "gitlab-ci.yml deployment on multiple hosts", you can use YAML anchors to trigger parallel deployment on multiple environments, which means "multiple servers".

GitlabCi deploy on multiple servers

3 Answers3

Update a deploy freeze period in the UI

Linked