GitLab by VSHN

GitLab, managed by VSHN for you.

The most comprehensive AI-powered DevSecOps Platform.

Deliver better software faster with one platform for your entire software delivery lifecycle.

— GitLab Website

Our service offers a compelling solution for businesses seeking secure and efficient code hosting. Based in Switzerland, our service provides several key advantages:

Switzerland Based

Hosting your GitLab service by a company based in Switzerland ensures data privacy, security, and compliance with strict Swiss regulations.

Unrestricted Access to GitLab Features

With our service, you have access to the full range of GitLab’s features, ensuring you can tailor your code hosting needs to your specific needs.

Simple Price Model

We offer a straightforward pricing model, making it easy for you to budget and plan for your code hosting needs without hidden costs or surprises.

SLA Available

For added peace of mind, we offer Service Level Agreements (SLAs) that guarantee the reliability and availability of your GitLab service.

Run by Experts Running Software

Our service is managed by a team of experts with a proven track record of running complex software systems, ensuring that your GitLab service is in capable hands.

In summary, our service provides a secure, feature-rich, and hassle-free solution for code hosting, all while benefiting from Switzerland’s robust data protection laws and the expertise of DevOps professionals.

Availability of the service

Features

Flexible sizing

All combinations of CPU/RAM/Storage are supported as per the underlying infrastructure. See [Requirements] below.

Dedicated GitLab server instance

It’s your own dedicated GitLab instance, not shared with any other customer. You control where your data is located and how the system is accessed to ensure the highest level of compliance.

Control over the configuration

The configuration management gives full administrative access to the GitLab configuration, the user management, and the repositories allowing tweaking the GitLab to the requirements.

Works with all GitLab plans: Free, Premium, and Ultimate

No matter if you prefer the Free, Premium or Ultimate GitLab plan, we take care of the server management and the subscriptions for you.

More GitLab features compared to GitLab SaaS

In comparison to the GitLab.com SaaS service, we offer the full range of possibilities. See the features marked as "*Only available on Self-Managed" the GitLab website.

Flexible GitLab CI Runners

You can choose to bring your own GitLab CI runner, let VSHN manage dedicated runners for you, or integrate a Kubernetes cluster to schedule CI jobs as Pods and auto-scale the cluster.

GitLab Support

While we at VSHN have experts in using the key features of GitLab like code hosting and CI/CD, we are not experts in configuring all the features of GitLab. We do not provide configuration changes for GitLab internals or general usage support as part of this service.

With our AppFlow offering, we are happy to assess your requirements and help you hands-on to automate the development cycle and operation of production applications including taking over operations responsibility for your web application with our AppOps offering.

Support for GitLab is organized in two levels:

Level 1: End-User Support

Helping users with the daily use of GitLab is the customer’s concern. End-user support isn’t included in this service. A GitLab Professional Services partner can help, you’ll find them via the GitLab Partner Locator.

Level 2: Operations Support

VSHN provides support concerning the operations of GitLab. Our Support Plans describes in detail what VSHN offers in terms of support.

Supported versions

In accordance to the GitLab release and maintenance policy we only support the latest available version.

The "releases" category in the GitLab blog has all information about current releases.

Once a version isn’t supported anymore by the upstream project, we’ll stop supporting the version as well.

Upgrade Policy

We continuously keep GitLab up-to-date.

Service Level Indicator (SLI)

According to the service levels the SLI "Up" is defined as follows:

GitLab responds to HTTPS requests from localhost to the authentication page. The service is considered up, if the request succeeds in under 5 seconds.

The GitLab internal health check reports OK. The service is considered up, if the state is not deviating from OK for more that 1 minute.

SSH connections respond to TCP connections from localhost. The service is considered up, if the request succeeds in under 5 seconds.

Incident Prevention

The capacity of the instances are monitored. If a threshold is reached, an automated alert is generated to an alert channel of the customer’s choice.

  • The configured storage is in danger to run full

  • The remaining available connections are in danger to run out

  • The memory is in danger to run low

In addition various aspects of the underlying operating system and services are monitored as well. A complete list can be found at Managed Service Monitoring.

Data Protection

All persistent data of GitLab is regularly stored in an encrypted backup storage location. For more details, see Managed Service Backup.

Recurring Maintenance

We conduct recurring maintenance tasks on the service to keep it stable and up-to-date.

For details, see Managed Service Maintenance.

Planned Maintenance Activities

Weekly maintenance ensures timely software updates for GitLab and the server itself.

Mandatory Maintenance Activities
  • Security issue (CVE) mitigation by updating to a patched version or configuration adjustments, usually causes service restart.

  • Operating system updates (especially Linux Kernel updates) lead to a service or server restart that cause interrupts.

Maintenance Windows

As the maintenance causes a downtime of the service, different maintenance windows are available.

Users responsibilities

As a DevOps company, we believe in its collaborative approach. Flawless service is only possible through a sense of responsibility on both sides. Accordingly, we rely on the user to consider the following points:

  • Choose reasonably sized resources for the software consuming the service

  • Act early when an increase in service usage is foreseen (for example increase resources)

  • Rely on best-practices for using the service

  • Choose a matching service level for your use-case

Behind the scenes

GitLab is installed and configured using the Omnibus installation method on a VSHN Managed Server based on Ubuntu LTS.

Pricing

Service Level per 30 days (720h)

CHF 360.00

  • Includes one additional development/test instance with Service Level "Best Effort"

CHF 1'500.00

Table 1. Addons
Addon per 30 days (720h)

GitLab CI runner

CHF 200.00

  • The computing resources required for the service are not included in the price and charged additionally.

  • These prices are valid starting 2024-07-01 until further notice.

See Pricing for more details.

Addon: GitLab Runner

A GitLab runner executes CI/CD actions based on GitLab CI/CD.

This addon is available on request, as it depends on many factors, especially the requirements of the type of actions to be executed

FAQ

What do I need to get the service?

You need to choose a Cloud Service Provider that provide Ubuntu LTS virtual machines or have your own infrastructure that provides such a VM. We need full SSH root access to this VM and some defined in- and outbound network connections, see here.

Where do I get it?

If you are a customer of VSHN already, you can directly create a ticket requesting a new GitLab instance. If you’re not yet a customer, please write to sales@vshn.ch.

Are there any extra costs?

Additional costs are the compute and storage resources from your Cloud Service Provider or your own VM infrastructure, and optionally a GitLab Premium or Ultimate plan, which generates subscription costs per user.

Who will set it up and what will that cost?

A VSHN engineer will set up the service for you. The setup is free, if the here are met.

How can I get support?

You can either open a ticket on our customer portal or send an email to support@vshn.ch. Please note that extended support is only available with our Support Plans.