back to article GitLab's move off Azure to Google cloud totally unrelated to Microsoft's GitHub acquisition. Yep

From the department of "yeah, right" comes news that GitLab is shifting its platform from Azure to Google in order to take advantage of the ad giant's Kubernetes technology. It is, of course, absolutely nothing to do with cosying up to developers still anguished following Microsoft's purchase of GitHub. Nope, absolutely not. …

  1. Craigie

    How?

    Can anyone with experience chime in and describe for the curious how such a migration would be achieved?

    1. steviebuk Silver badge

      Re: How?

      They copy it to floppy ,hand the floppy to someone at Google, they copy it to their servers.

      Done.

      I'm also curious as, despite being in IT, haven't got a clue how they do these sorts of migrations.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: How?

      Its more likely related to Google becoming increasing desperate as Azure and to a lesser degree AWS are winning most of the enterprise business so Google are pretty much giving their services away to try and stay relevant.

      1. ratfox
        Coffee/keyboard

        Re: How?

        "Azure and to a lesser degree AWS"

        Sure.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: How?

          "Sure."

          Yes im sure. Roughly twice as many enterprise CIOs are planning to move to Azure as AWS. As per stats quoted on an article here.

          1. Anonymous Coward
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: How?

            Yes im sure. Roughly twice as many enterprise CIOs are planning to move to Azure as AWS. As per stats quoted on an article here.

            You still need to multiply it by the CIO's fatness to have correct dimensionality in the comparions.

            How many of those CIOs are from companies already married to Microsoft and too small or weak in IT to implement a "let go" program?

            Azure, like anything else from the House Of Microsofts, reeks of overcomplexification, historical baggage and several committees working on it where the members don't talk to each other.

            I remember how hard it used to be to even manage a credit card in Azure (or even to log in, you would be siphoned through various servers owned by Microsoft for no good reason). Three years earlier, paying in AWS (not to mention logging in) was a snap.

        2. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Paul Matencio

        Re: How?

        Irrelevant. Google GKE has more features than AKR, it is faster and it costs less. It people in traditional enterprise are not that smart if not they woukd move to GKE( based on my experience)

      3. Aitor 1

        Re: How?

        Also desperate intel selling their product with huge discounts to the big players. Massive error, as this puts them on the hands of a few buyers.

    3. Anonymous Crowbar

      Re: How?

      Probably use the equivalent of Amazon snowball device and then sync deltas for the storage. Containers will be easy enough

    4. macjules

      Re: How?

      3 steps

      1) git clone git@github.com:capita/anotherproject.git

      2) cd anotherproject.git

      3) git remote add upstream https://USER@bitbucket.org/USER/PROJECT.git

      I mention BB since we are now transitioning everything away from both GitLab and (self hosted) Github. Not at all surprised to hear GitLab was hosted on Azure after the complete fiasco last year.

      1. Claptrap314 Silver badge

        Re: How?

        > 3 steps

        Yeah, no. Sure, that can work for a small organization, but you don't want to try that for more than a few hundred repos. The bandwidth costs alone will absolutely kill you.

        This is a bulk data move, and the fine folks at Google are super-motivated to make this go down well. In fact, the folks are Azure are also well motivated, because if they get blamed for a mess, then they will be charged with vendor lock-in, not to mention the general concern in the industry involving u$ and quality.

        1) Gitlab gets its servers up and running in Google. Checks indicate that they function properly.

        2) Google provides Azure with physical media to transfer the data.

        3) Azure safety scans the physical media provided by Google, and creates backups.

        4) The backup physical media is transfered to the Google datacenters.

        5) The Google safety scans the physical media, and plugs it in.

        6) If you are quick, Gitlab sets upstream branches on the Google repos to point to Azure, and updates them periodicaly. If you are not quick, it might be cheaper to do a second physical transfer with a delta.

        7) MAGIC: Gitlab has its Azure servers redirect to the Google servers as the repos come up to date.

        8) Gitlab updates its DNS records to point to the Google servers.

        9) Gitlab shuts down the Azure servers.

        10) Azure securely overwrites or destroys the SANs with private repos. The public ones might be turned into mirrors, or just overwritten.

        At least, that's my first guess. :P

        1. Waseem Alkurdi
          Trollface

          Re: How?

          3) Azure safety scans the physical media provided by Google.

          Are you sure this would happen?

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Kubernetes makes migration of the servers very easy, along with allocating IP addresses - all containers are neatly packaged up. Migrating data is another matter, along with switching DNS records.

    Remember getting downvoted for explaining the pitfalls of Kubernetes on Azure in the past https://forums.theregister.co.uk/forum/1/2017/07/27/microsoft_previews_azure_container_instances/ would suggest others experience it first hand before assuming Kubernetes on Azure is rosey.

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

      1. Teiwaz

        If MS aren't stopping the migration, it suggests they have no real confidence in their own Kubernetes implementation to me.

        Confusing I know, Microsoft bought Github, this article is referring to Gitlab, no one could ever confuse the two, of course..... Nyah!

      2. Zippy's Sausage Factory
        Facepalm

        I only realised this while out walking the dogs several hours later. Maybe the morning coffee took effect at last...

        Now if you'll excuse me, I'll go take some ProPlus, drink a Red Bull and then see if I can finally wake up...

    2. Lusty

      @AC "Remember getting downvoted for explaining the pitfalls of Kubernetes on Azure in the past"

      ACS and AKS are different services so it's not surprising you'd get downvoted for talking about Kubernetes on a thread about container services. I didn't bother going and looking at your comment as the one I'm replying to suggests you don't put much thought into the content...

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "Remember getting downvoted for explaining the pitfalls of Kubernetes on Azure in the past "

      Azure is good at a lot of things, but V1 products is often not one of them. I'm sure you have valid points. And if you just need Kubernates then Google is probably a no brainer right now. Especially as they seem to be discounting to insane levels to get business.

      Microsoft's greatest successes often seem to be in ripping off the ideas of others and doing it better. They have already gone all in on Docker with Windows Server supporting it natively. So I bet it's not long before Azure's Kubernates products beat Google for usability, integration and functionality. I can see Microsoft integrating it with say Intune to give an alternative to Helm and similar products. OSS products are generally developed from a command line perspective and that's often a higher learning curve barrier to entry than a product that's developed from a GUI. And Microsoft's GUIs generally run on top of Powershell these days so you get the best of both worlds.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        "Microsoft's greatest successes often seem to be in ripping off the ideas of others and doing it better."

        Ripping off, yes. Doing better, not really. They just tend to wrap them into their existing ecosystem to the point that lazy admins simply deploy over alternative products because of perceived familiarity with the brand and because it's one less vendor to negotiate contracts with.

        "And Microsoft's GUIs generally run on top of Powershell these days so you get the best of both worlds."

        The performance of a lot of the newer Microsoft admin tools reflects this, unfortunately.

  3. JDX Gold badge

    Cynical much?

    This is a major undertaking not to be done at the drop of a hat. Also, you think MS would move their platform away from their own servers just to win points from anti-MS people? I bet most people never even knew GH was using MS servers (I didn't)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Cynical much?

      @JDX

      GitLab is not GitHub.

      Pro-MS folks are often confused, evidently.

      ----

      "Cynical much?

      This is a major undertaking not to be done at the drop of a hat. Also, you think MS would move their platform away from their own servers just to win points from anti-MS people? I bet most people never even knew GH was using MS servers (I didn't)"

  4. iron Silver badge
    FAIL

    Learn to Read!

    GitLab != GitHub

    MS are buying GitHub, not GitLab. They are not moving GitHub's back end away from Azure to Google, that is GitLab. I have no idea what back end GitHub uses.

    Sorry to spoil your blind MS bashing party.

    1. ibmalone

      Re: Learn to Read!

      Github run on their own infrastructure https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/05/30/github_zero_downtime/ for now anyway. Should we start a sweepstake on when they'll move to Azure?

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: Learn to Read!

        Can I put money on, they keep the existing infrastructure, and change the name of it to make it part of the Azure family.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Learn to Read!

          "Can I put money on, they keep the existing infrastructure, and change the name of it to make it part of the Azure family."

          GitHub use a blend of Kubernates and dedicated boxes at Rackspace as I understand it, so I doubt it would stay there long term. I would put money on it moving to a Microsoft facility at some point.

  5. Mystic Megabyte
    WTF?

    No!

    I going to create GitHab and move it to Amazon, that might stop the confusion /s

    1. Tigra 07
      Thumb Up

      Re: Mystic Megabyte

      Don't forget Gitlub on iCloud

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Whoor!

    Paris pics are all over TitHub

  7. thames

    Next Month's Le Reg Story

    And next month The Register will report that GitLab is being bought by Google. Someone is going to buy them, and the top candidates would be Google and Amazon.

    1. Multivac

      Re: Next Month's Le Reg Story

      Gitlab have been very public about their intended IPO on the 18th of November 2020, it's on their website https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/#sequence- .

    2. Lusty

      Re: Next Month's Le Reg Story

      Is "Le Reg" the French subsidiary of El Reg?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Next Month's Le Reg Story

        A French El Reg! Never!

  8. RyokuMas
    Stop

    A phrase springs to mind...

    ... involving the devil and the deep blue sea.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    1. Anonymous Coward
  10. magickmark
    Windows

    Any takers?

    I was thinking of creating a new service called "OldGitPornHub" and then putting the back end into the public domain.

    1. Marcelo Rodrigues
      Gimp

      Re: Any takers?

      "I was thinking of creating a new service called "OldGitPornHub" and then putting the back end into the public domain."

      Don't be a wimp! Open the front end to the public too!

    2. Robert Carnegie Silver badge

      Re: Any takers?

      "and then putting the back end into the public domain"

      How very dare you!

    3. jake Silver badge

      Re: Any takers?

      It already exists. It's called USENET.

  11. theExecutive

    GitHob

    May as well , its where Hub originated, and I can make money from the mass stupid

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    To paraphrase a famous quote by a prominent historical figure...

    Google is a disease of the skin. Microsoft is a disease of the heart.

  13. elvisimprsntr

    They copy it to floppy ,hand the floppy to someone at Google, they copy it to their servers.

    Done.

    Isn't that how they did it in Office Space?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GyB6ffmXsZo

  14. Fungus Bob

    All this talk of Gits and no one mentioned...

    Gitarzan!

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=293Irm-vxtE

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    mmm containers

    The hyped up shit of the stupid at the moment!!!.

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