Monthly Archives: March 2016

How to Migrate a Git Repository

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When and why?

We wrote yesterday about the GitEnt-Scm.com shutdown due on April 30th, 2016. Now the issue you would be facing is: how to migrate somewhere else?
Although StackOverflow already contains over 800 response threads when asking this question we thought that giving a practical example based on a real-life GitEnt repository would allow you to avoid the trial & error discovery.

Step 1 – Mirror clone

When you want to clone a repository for the purpose of migration, you really want everything, including all the other refs that are not branches:

  • Git Tags (refs/tags/*)
  • Git Notes (refs/notes/*)
  • Gerrit Reviews (refs/changes/*)
  • Gerrit Configs (refs/meta/*)

Instead of using a standard clone, you can do a “git clone –mirror”, which implies –bare and thus does not generate a working copy.

Example:

$ git clone --mirror ssh://myuser@gitent-scm.com/git/myorg/myrepo.git
Cloning into bare repository 'myrepo.git'...
remote: Counting objects: 109, done
remote: Finding sources: 100% (109/109)
remote: Total 109 (delta 19), reused 83 (delta 19)
Receiving objects: 100% (109/109), 66.42 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (19/19), done.
Checking connectivity... done.

Step 2 – Create empty repo on the new Git Server

You need to have an empty target repository where to push your mirrored local clone. Note that most of the Git Servers propose you to create a first master branch with a README, but, in this case, you do not need it and it would only create more trouble in your migration path.

Example for GitHub:

– Go to https://github.com/new and create the ‘myrepo’ repository
– Do not tick any of the suggested README or LICENSE auto-generation
– Once the project is created, GitHub provides you with the repository Git URL (e.g. git@github.myorg/myrepo.git)

Step 3 – Push to the new Git Server

You are now ready to push to the target repository, and we can use the useful option “–mirror” again.
Similarly to the clone, “–mirror” automatically include all refs, including the non-branch ones (tags, notes, reviews, configs, …); it provides the behaviour of removing all the refs that are not present in your local clone. You should never use this option when you have a “regular default clone” as you would risk removing all the remote refs that have not been typically cloned with a standard default “git clone” operation.

Example for GitHub:

$ git push --mirror git@github.myorg/myrepo.git
Counting objects: 109, done.
Delta compression using up to 4 threads.
Compressing objects: 100% (61/61), done.
Writing objects: 100% (109/109), 66.42 KiB | 0 bytes/s, done.
Total 109 (delta 19), reused 109 (delta 19)
To git@github.myorg/myrepo.git
* [new branch] refs/changes/02/802/1 -> refs/changes/02/802/1
* [new branch] refs/changes/03/803/1 -> refs/changes/03/803/1
* [new branch] master -> master
* [new branch] refs/meta/config -> refs/meta/config

Step 4 – Import into GerritHub.io (Optional)

Your repository has not been fully migrated to your new target server. If you wish now to keep on using Gerrit Code Review for your Development Workflow, you can link your repository to Gerrit using GerritHub.io

The YouTube Video explains how to perform this last operation using GerritHub.io import Wizard.

Need more help?

Do you require more help? Contact our Sales Departement at sales@gerritforge.com and we will provide the extra support you need or perform the migration for you to GerritHub.io.

GitEnt-scm.com Farewell

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An open letter to all GitEnt-Scm.com users

it has been a fantastic journey to launch and see the GitEnterprise service growing over the past five years.
We announced the availability in 2011 of a new Enterprise-grade service ahead of other major competitors such as CollabNet or Atlassian. We were the only real Enterprise-Ready Git service much more advanced than GitHub and well before the birth of GitHub:Enterprise.

Since then, over 5000 people used and loved our service and enjoyed a fully FREE and compelling Git server, powered by Gerrit Code Review, the major OpenSource platform code for Code Review on Git.
We are grateful for your trust and confidence in us.

From premium service to commodity

Times have changed, what was considered a premium had become a commodity and services like BitBucket started to erode our take up in the past three years. We moved on to a different and more compelling level of services, jumping again on the edge of innovation and moving into Code Review and its integration with the Continuous Delivery pipeline. We launched in 2013 a brand-new service called GerritHub.io which is now the reference point for major OpenSource and Commercial organisations such as IBM, Cisco System, RedHat and Rackspace.

We continued to maintain both GitEnterprise and GerritHub.io so that you did not have to face any migration or disruption; however the audience of GitEnterprise has become so marginal that we have unfortunately decided to shut down the service within the next 30 calendar days.

The choice: Red or Blue pill?

You have two options, either stay on the cutting edge technology and jump to GerritHub.io or moving to a free commodity service.

Option 1 => migrate to GerritHub.io

Option 2 => moving to another Git provider, such as BitBucket or GitLab.

If you decide to go for Option 1, we invite you to watch the GerritHub.io video on YouTube  and decide whether you would like to start adopting Gerrit Code Review workflow, bearing in mind that it may actually change the way you interact and manage your Git repositories.

Should you need our help in migrating your repositories, we can offer our bolt-on support services at a 10% discounted rate. See www.gerritforge.com/pricing for all the options available and costs involved.

Time is running fast: ACT NOW !

You do need to take a decision before the 30th of April 2016, as after that date the GitEnterprise.com and GitEnt-SCM.com will just redirect to our GerritForge Website and your repositories will not be accessible anymore.

Thank you again for those five fantastic years and for believing in us.
We hope you will decide to continue your journey with us.

Should you have any doubts, please do not hesitate to come back us.

The GerritForge Support Team.

Gerrit Upgraded with No Downtime

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Screen Shot 2016-03-21 at 20.48.12

Zero DownTime success story.

From today at 08:06 GMT GerritHub users are served by our brand new infrastructure geo-located in Canada, Quebec, Beauharnois. It is the first time we applied a zero-downtime roll-out scheme, the PingDom uptime for the past 24h reported 100% uptime and 688 msec average response time for the page of the list of opened changes. The two response times spike on the above graphs are actually due to the old German infrastructure and happened before the start of the roll-out.

We can see the switch of the traffic to the new infrastructure from the increase of the overall response time (IP packets were routed from Germany to Canada causing extra hops); as the DNS propagation was spreading across the world, the overall number of hops gradually came back to normal.

Timeline of the events.

  • 08:00:00 GMT – Phase 1 – Set Gerrit READ-ONLY. All changes and Git repositories started to refuse push and updates.
  • 08:00:01 GMT – Phase 2 – Wait for pending replication to complete. Replication queue was empty; there was no need to wait.
  • 08:00:02 GMT – Phase 3 – Mirror DB and Git for the last time, delta-reindex, DB upgrade and Gerrit restart. It has been the longest part of the roll-out and lasted 5′ 32”, aligned with our estimates.
  • 08:05:34 GMT – Phase 4 – Cache warm-up. 20K projects, 8K accounts and 4.6K groups were pre-loaded in Gerrit. This step was optional but allowed us to redirect all the traffic without risks of causing thread spikes on the new infrastructure.
  • 08:06:23 GMT – Phase 5 – Redirect traffic to the new infrastructure.

Did anybody notice the rollout?

During the rollout the Git projects and Gerrit changes were read-only for 6′ and 23”. According to the logs, 493 Git/HTTP and 172 Git/SSH invocations were made and completed successfully: none of them failed.

What is the situation right now?

The new infrastructure public IP (192.99.233.76) has almost completed his DNS propagation around the world, the only countries not entirely covered are Australia and China. The rest of the world is coming directly to Canada avoid the German hops. Metrics are good, low CPU utilization and threads consumption compared to the old German infrastructure, symptom of the reduction of the execution and serving times and latency.

What’s next?

From now on we will continue to use this Blue/Green roll-out strategy, possibly improving in the ReadOnly window by introducing live distributed reindex and cache warm-up.

We fully commit to Zero-Downtime and Stability, the most valuable assets for our clients.

GerritHub and Zero-Downtime Upgrade

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GerritHub gets bigger on Mon, 21 March 08:00 GMT


GerritHub has experienced unprecedented growth over the past two years. The November 2015 numbers presented at the Google User Summit in Mountain View – CA have been surpassed again, and we do need to make sure that our infrastructure is still capable of dealing with current and future users’ needs.

What is changing in GerritHub.io?

We are changing everything, from the version of Gerrit to the hardware, network and storage infrastructure. Data, DBMS, Indexes and cache, need to be upgraded and refreshed to make sure that the new systems are reflecting exacting the current production data and sessions.
We are changing as well the geo-location of our servers, from the current server farm in Germany (Bayern, Nuremberg – 100 MBps) to a new server farm in Canada (Quebec, Beauharnois – 1 GBps).

Why have so many changes?

We started to measure some significant delay in the Git and review operations on the old infrastructure, mainly due to three factors:

  1. More users, more repositories, more concurrency. Individuals, OpenSource projects and Businesses started using GerritHub.io for their mission-critical repositories, considering Gerrit the “source of truth” of their review workflow. We needed more horsepower, memory, storage and ability to scale even further.
  2. Bandwidth from USA and Far-east. The majority of people using GerritHub.io are from the other side of the Atlantic Ocean: this is typically not a problem from 7 AM to 3 PM … but after 4 PM the connectivity between Europe and the Americas becomes slow. Additionally, people using GerritHub.io from India, Japan, Australia and New Zealand experienced terrible slowdowns because of the excessive number of hops to reach Germany.
  3. Gerrit master is much faster. Based on the current data and metrics measured on GerritHub.io, we have contributed a lot of patches to reduce the overhead caused by Gerrit DB and lessen the number of SQL queries per minute. All those new improvements are on Gerrit master, and we need to catch-up with the “latest and greatest” version.

Will I experience any GerritHub.io outage?

Last time that GitHub needed to make a major upgrade, asked his 5M users to stop working for 23 minutes,. This translates to a loss of two millions of hours of continuous delivery lifecycle, equivalent to over 130 man/years, worth no less than eight millions dollars.
We are going to adopt a new Zero-Downtime Gerrit roll-out strategy to make sure that all those changes are not going to impact your day-by-day activity. If you were not reading this post you would possibly even not notice the “switch” from the old to the new infrastructure, apart from the increase in speed and bandwidth.

Zero-downtime GerritHub.io migration, step by step with the associated expected timings.

Phase 0 – Replication to the new Gerrit infrastructure. (- 1 month ago)
We started migrating everything one month ago, and the old and new infrastructure are working side-by-side, thanks to Gerrit master-slave replication. The new Gerrit servers are active as slaves and are read-only.

Phase 1 – Migration kick-off. (08:00 GMT)
We install a Gerrit plugin that rejects all the push to GerritHub.io repositories providing a courtesy message: “Gerrit is under maintenance, all projects are READ ONLY”. All the HTTP POST, PUT and DELETE are disable on the Gerrit REST-API.

Phase 2 – Wait for replication events to complete and migrate DB. (08:02 GMT)
Git repositories are continuously replicated, but we do need to make sure that the event queue is empty. Once that happens we schedule the last final DB migration to the new infrastructure.

Phase 3 – Gerrit DB upgrade and reindex (08:04 GMT)
New Gerrit server executes the final upgrade and off-line reindex of the latest received changes.

Phase 4 – Gerrit start-up and cache warm-up (08:05 GMT)
New Gerrit is restarted and the most critical Gerrit caches (projects, accounts and groups) are pre-loaded in memory. This allows the incoming traffic spike to avoid the collapse of used threads and makes the transition as smooth as possible without slowdowns.

Phase 5 – Traffic switch and DNS updates (08:06 GMT)
GerritHub.io redirects all incoming HTTPS and SSH traffic to the new infrastructure. Git pushes and HTTP PUT, POST and DELETE operations of the REST API are operational again and served by the new Gerrit infrastructure. GerritHub.io DNS is updated to the new Canadian IPs.

Phase 6 – New IPs gets propagate to all worldwide DNSs (+ 1 day)
Once all the DNSs in the world would have been updated, everyone will start going directly to the new infrastructure without further hops or redirection from Germany. Customers from USA, Canada, South America, Asia, Japan, New Zealand and Australia should see a significant reduction of the network latency and increase of GerritHub.io responsiveness.

Firewall and SSH considerations

Even if Gerrit server’s SSH key is not changing, some of you may see a warning similar to this when they push or pull over SSH:

Warning: the RSA host key for ‘review.gerrithub.io’ differs from the key for the IP address ‘148.251.77.70’

The warning message will also tell you which lines in your ~/.ssh/known_hosts need to change. Open that file in your favorite editor, remove or comment out those lines, then retry your push or pull.

Should your network have some strict firewall rules to access external sites, you may want to whitelist the IP of the new infrastructure WLB to: 192.99.233.76.

Follow GerritHub.io migration progress.

We will advertise the migration progress on Twitter at @GitEnterprise. Should you have any issue you can tweet us or contact GerritForge Customer Support at support@gerritforge.com.