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GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

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Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#21

Post by growse »

thinkafterbef wrote: post #13

The feature pull request has been there for over a year[1], it’s nice that’s it’s released! Incoming shameless plug; if you don’t have to handle the hosting runners, but still to reap the benefits of having proper hardware(close to the metal). Check out BuildJet for GitHub actions - 2x the speed for half the price. Easy to install and easy to revert. [1] https://github.com/actions/runner/pull/660 [2] https://buildjet…

Buildjet seems to be KVM-based, so does the job still runs in a VM?

Does it support nested KVM, e.g. for running Android espresso / emulator tests?

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#22

Post by veidr »

thinkafterbef wrote: post #13

The feature pull request has been there for over a year[1], it’s nice that’s it’s released! Incoming shameless plug; if you don’t have to handle the hosting runners, but still to reap the benefits of having proper hardware(close to the metal). Check out BuildJet for GitHub actions - 2x the speed for half the price. Easy to install and easy to revert. [1] https://github.com/actions/runner/pull/660 [2] https://buildjet…

Wow that looks like exactly what I need. We recently moved to GHA and while it is nice in many ways, my main complaint is that unlike our previous (AWS CodeBuild/CodePipeline) setup, we can't just pay more to get more powerful instances to run CI.

Looking into setting up self-hosted runners has been on my todo list since the first day of using GHA; will definitely check out your service soon.

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#24

Post by mcintyre1994 »

The autoscaling piece is cool! One of the things that impressed me most about Gitlab CI was how easily we could get runners autoscaling in our own AWS environment. We'd run tiny instances as the actual runner, and they'd spin up bulky instances for different jobs with none of those running when nobody was working. It sounds like this might give a building block to build that in Github Actions.

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#25

Post by thinkafterbef »

growse wrote: post #21
thinkafterbef wrote: post #13

The feature pull request has been there for over a year[1], it’s nice that’s it’s released! Incoming shameless plug; if you don’t have to handle the hosting runners, but still to reap the benefits of having proper hardware(close to the metal). Check out BuildJet for GitHub actions - 2x the speed for half the price. Easy to install and easy to revert. [1] https://github.com/actions/runner/pull/660 [2] https://buildjet…

Buildjet seems to be KVM-based, so does the job still runs in a VM? Does it support nested KVM, e.g. for running Android espresso / emulator tests?

Yes, job runs in a KVM VM. Nested KVM is supported on the hypervisor, but KVM is not enabled by default in guest OS, due to we run a guest kernel for faster booting time. We will offer an option to enable kvm kernel module in the future.

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#26

Post by spockz »

sascha_sl wrote: post #15
hirako2000 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My main grip with Github is that it's pushing more tie in features to own the development experience even further. Github started as a community development hub, now trying to swallow us all, owning each bit of the development process to then own the market. I don't have any affection for aws or gcp either, their attempt to dominate as de facto infrastructure and software provider is scary. We don't need github actio…

It's an option, nothing more. My main gripe with it that it has the same effect as MS Teams: Execs see that a new product enters the market, with a vendor they already have agreements with, and it's either bundled in for free or relatively cheap. Being the right solution for the job has already lost at that point.

This phenomenon is also referred to “best of suite” over “best of breed”.

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#27

Post by jbergstroem »

e_proxus wrote: post #16

I really wish the runner agent was written in something more portable than .NET. That choice feels like something purely political because they’re owned by Microsoft. I doubt and independent organization would have chosen it before other excellent choices such as Go, Rust etc. Currently hosting the runner on e.g. FreeBSD or custom embedded systems is not supported (or even possible).

There is an ongoing project built on top of act (the "local" github runner) that accomplishes this: https://github.com/ChristopherHX/github-act-runner

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#28

Post by jffry »

anonymousDan wrote: post #23

Can someone tell me if GHA also supports non-ephemeral self hosted runners, and if so whether they work reliably? Any good resources for getting up and running with it quickly?

GitHub's own documentation about GHA has a nav section titled "Hosting your own runners".

Here's a link: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=github+actions+self+hosted+runners

I haven't used it myself so I can't speak to how well it works.

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#29

Post by easton »

sascha_sl wrote: post #17
e_proxus wrote: post #16

I really wish the runner agent was written in something more portable than .NET. That choice feels like something purely political because they’re owned by Microsoft. I doubt and independent organization would have chosen it before other excellent choices such as Go, Rust etc. Currently hosting the runner on e.g. FreeBSD or custom embedded systems is not supported (or even possible).

It's not because they're owned by Microsoft, at least not in the way you think. It's because GitHub Actions is rebranded Azure Pipelines. That a team at GitHub has been given a pile of Microsoft authored code is honestly much more concerning. They don't seem to understand it in its entirety either.

I didn't want to believe it, but then I did a search through their repo:

```

  else if (value.Contains("Microsoft.Azure.DevOps"))
                {
                    m_typeName = value.Replace("Microsoft.Azure.DevOps", "GitHub");
                   m_typeName = m_typeName.Substring(0, m_typeName.IndexOf(",")) + ", Sdk";

                }
```

Re: GitHub Actions: Ephemeral self-hosted runners and new webhooks for auto-scaling

#30

Post by runeks »

easton wrote: post #29
sascha_sl wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not because they're owned by Microsoft, at least not in the way you think. It's because GitHub Actions is rebranded Azure Pipelines. That a team at GitHub has been given a pile of Microsoft authored code is honestly much more concerning. They don't seem to understand it in its entirety either.

I didn't want to believe it, but then I did a search through their repo: ``` else if (value.Contains("Microsoft.Azure.DevOps")) { m_typeName = value.Replace("Microsoft.Azure.DevOps", "GitHub"); m_typeName = m_typeName.Substring(0, m_typeName.IndexOf(",")) + ", Sdk"; } ```

Which repo?
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