Today the demand for new DevOps tools and integrations has increased multifold. The primary reason being; an increase in demand for optimizing everyday business workflows to meet today’s need for speed.

In short, DevOps tools such as GitLab, are here to stay.

These tools assist developers in optimizing their software development processes, making delivery faster and the quality of their work better.

Data Pipelines are distinguished by jobs and stages that dictate what tasks are completed and when. In GitLab, Pipelines can be configured in a variety of ways. But what about the data which is about to get streamed? Every piece of data must be linked or related, whether you are fetching it from a single database or multiple databases or from the same warehouse; this is where PostgreSQL comes in.

When the pipeline is executed, PostgreSQL enables the network access services linked to your application containers — a perfect illustration of such services and databases.

This article will teach you about GitLab PostgreSQL Integration and provide an overview of the two platforms and their key features.

Prerequisites

  • PostgreSQL 12.x or later version
  • Gitlab Account

What is GitLab?

GitLab PostgreSQL | GitLab
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GitLab is a web-based Git repository that provides open and private repositories for free, as well as issue tracking and wiki functionality. GitLab is a popular DevOps platform that enables developers to manage all aspects of a project, including project planning, source code management, monitoring, and security. It also allows teams to collaborate at every stage of the project, resulting in better software. Because of its extensive capabilities and readily available code blocks, it is gaining popularity among developers.

GitLab enables teams to reduce product lifecycles and increase productivity, resulting in more value for customers. Furthermore, users are not required to manage permissions for each tool in the application. Everyone in the company has access to all components if permissions are specified only once. Users can also subscribe to GitLab’s subscription plan, which costs around $ 4 per month and gives them access to some advanced features.

Key Features of Gitlab

GitLab’s key features include the following:

  • Continuous Integration/Deployment (CI/CD) tool: CI/CD is a method of increasing the frequency with which applications are delivered to clients by incorporating automation into the app development process. GitLab provides a robust CI/CD tool.
  • Management of Source Code: GitLab offers a collaborative workspace for any code files that your team requires. You can easily edit, moderate access, and iterate code by branching and merging with the main files.
  • DevOps Automation: GitLab provides a pipeline that eliminates the need for testing, security scanning, and deployment. The automatic DevOps functionality kicks in as soon as code is published to a repository, removing several steps and team members’ work.
  • DevSecOps at GitLab: To improve security, static tests (SAST) are performed on each code block before it is committed to the main files. This feature affects Vulnerability Management, Android App Testing, and Container Security as well.
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What is PostgreSQL?

GitLab PostgreSQL - PostgreSQL Logo
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The PostgreSQL Global Development Group created PostgreSQL, a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS). It’s been around for over 20 years and supports both SQL and JSON for relational and non-relational queries to provide flexibility and SQL compliance.

Since its inception, PostgreSQL has been known as a dependable, feature-rich, and performance-rich utility. For online, mobile, geospatial, and analytics applications, many businesses rely on PostgreSQL as their primary data storage/data warehouse.

PostgreSQL is available for Linux, UNIX (AIX, BSD, HP-UX, SGI IRIX, Mac OS X, Solaris, Tru64), and Windows.

Key Features of PostgreSQL

Here are the features of PostgreSQL:

  • Open-Source: The PostgreSQL database management system is an Object-Relational Database Management System (ORDBMS). PostgreSQL can thus provide both Object-Oriented and Relational Database functionality. It is an Open-Source ORDBMS that is available for free.
  • Popular User Base: Apple, Cisco, Etsy, Facebook, Instagram, Red Hat, Skype, Spotify, and Yahoo are just a few of the companies that use PostgreSQL.
  • Concurrency Control for Multiple Versions: PostgreSQL has a multi-version concurrency control that provides each transaction with a “snapshot” of the database, allowing changes to be made without affecting other transactions. This eliminates the need for reading locks and ensures that the database follows ACID principles.
  • Standards and Dependability Compliance: PostgreSQL is a fault-tolerant database because of its write-ahead logging. Its large community of open source contributors provides it with an in-built community support network. PostgreSQL is ACID-compliant and supports foreign keys, joins, views, triggers, and stored procedures in a variety of languages.
  • A Friendly Neighborhood: PostgreSQL has an active community, ready to help. Private, third-party assistance is also available. The PostgreSQL Global Development Group is where the community updates the PostgreSQL platform.

Why Integrate GitLab with PostgreSQL?

The major reason to integrate these platforms is that the GitLab PostgreSQL Integration will help you with persistent database information, for example, users, permissions, issues, or other metadata. This can be time-saving and the information is shared/ accessed immediately.

Also, integrating the PostgreSQL database into your unit is very simple. Tiny problems that might not be obvious when relying on an in-memory database which can be avoided by matching the precise database version that is also used in production.

Getting Started with GitLab PostgreSQL Integration

GitLab PostgreSQL - GitLab PostgreSQL
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Before going ahead with the GitLab PostgreSQL Integration, you can use a managed PostgreSQL service if you host GitLab on a cloud provider or you can also manage your own PostgreSQL instance or cluster in addition to the Omnibus GitLab package.

  • Step 1: Set up PostgreSQL
#GitLab PostgreSQL
services:
  - postgres:12.2-alpine

variables:
  POSTGRES_DB: $POSTGRES_DB
  POSTGRES_USER: $POSTGRES_USER
  POSTGRES_PASSWORD: $POSTGRES_PASSWORD
  POSTGRES_HOST_AUTH_METHOD: trust
#GitLab PostgreSQL
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  • Step 2: Create a GitLab account and then create a gitlabhq_production database, and make sure the user is the database’s owner.
  • Step 3: In the /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file, configure the GitLab application servers with the appropriate connection details for your external PostgreSQL service:
#GitLab PostgreSQL 
# Disable all components except PostgreSQL
roles(['postgres_role'])
prometheus['enable'] = false
alertmanager['enable'] = false
pgbouncer_exporter['enable'] = false
redis_exporter['enable'] = false
gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false

#GitLab PostgreSQL
postgresql['listen_address'] = '0.0.0.0'
postgresql['port'] = 5432

# Replace POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH with a generated md5 value
postgresql['sql_user_password'] = 'POSTGRESQL_PASSWORD_HASH'

# Replace XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX/YY with Network Address
# ????
postgresql['trust_auth_cidr_addresses'] = %w(APPLICATION_SERVER_IP_BLOCKS)

#GitLab PostgreSQL 

# Disable automatic database migrations
gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
  • Step 4: Get GitLab reconfigured for the changes to take effect.
  • Step 5: Take note of the IP address or hostname, port, and plain text password for the PostgreSQL node. These are required later on when configuring the GitLab application servers.
  • Step 6: Switch on monitoring.

NOTE

  • Verify that the database is accessible from the cluster. Ensure that the firewall policy allows traffic.
  • When you run the PostgreSQL instance, you may encounter the following error:
#GitLab PostgreSQL 

pg_dump: error: Error message from server: SSL SYSCALL error: EOF detected

To resolve this error, ensure that the PostgreSQL minimum requirements are done. You should be able to perform a backup after upgrading your RDS instance to a suitable version. For more information, see issue #64763 (Segmentation fault citing LooseForeignKeys::CleanupWorker causes complete database restart).

Benefits of GitLab PostgreSQL Integration

The Benefits of GitLab PostgreSQL Integration are as follows:

  • Better performance: Running two separate database clusters will increase the total number of available database connections. This means they can serve more customers. It also means that there is more buffer during peak hours, which reduces the likelihood of congestion, which may cause performance and UX degradations.
  • Enhanced stability: When the database cluster is divided into main and ci, ci writes are directed to the ci database cluster. The GitLab PostgreSQL Integration anticipates that this will result in less database saturation, which is a major source of incidents.
  • Reusing tools and dashboards: This modification does add to the complexity. After all, it will be running a new database cluster. Because the ci cluster is nearly identical to the existing main cluster, our DBREs and SREs can reuse nearly all tools (for example, backups) and dashboards. This lowers the overall risk posed by this change.

Conclusion

This blog has introduced you to GitLab PostgreSQL Integration as well as provided an overview of the two platforms and their key features, along with that a simple three-step procedure to get started with GitLab PostgreSQL. An Automated Data Pipeline helps in solving this issue and this is where Hevo comes into the picture.

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Share your thoughts on GitLab PostgreSQL integration in the comments section below.

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