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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

#31

Post by mrclean8586 »

sascha_sl wrote: post #12

This feature was delayed every month after May. And yet it is still half baked. We prepared for this with internally shared docs and the branch built in private for a while, but still had to roll back yesterday because the scheduler reverted to putting jobs wherever it pleased (including on ephemeral runners that already have a job) and randomly cancels large sets of jobs too. I have been of the opinion that investin…

Product manager on the GitHub Actions team reporting in, we're sorry to hear about this issue with the rollout of ephemeral runners. Our engineering team is aware of this issue and is heavily prioritizing the investigation and fix.

We'd love to look into your specific case if you want shoot me an email: thejoebourneidentity@github.com

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

#32

Post by pestaa »

runeks wrote: post #30
easton wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

https://github.com/actions/runner/search?q=Azure

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

#33

Post by rubicks »

Too little and too late. Meanwhile, I'm over here with gitlab self-hosted runners that "dispatch" ephemeral runners. I can tweak scaling limits and the whole contraption runs seamlessly on the AWS ec2 instances of my choosing.

My company just competed the migration from github to gitlab and, while it's not perfect, there's a lot to like on gitlab.

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

#34

Post by sascha_sl »

mrclean8586 wrote: post #31
sascha_sl wrote: post #12

This feature was delayed every month after May. And yet it is still half baked. We prepared for this with internally shared docs and the branch built in private for a while, but still had to roll back yesterday because the scheduler reverted to putting jobs wherever it pleased (including on ephemeral runners that already have a job) and randomly cancels large sets of jobs too. I have been of the opinion that investin…

Product manager on the GitHub Actions team reporting in, we're sorry to hear about this issue with the rollout of ephemeral runners. Our engineering team is aware of this issue and is heavily prioritizing the investigation and fix. We'd love to look into your specific case if you want shoot me an email: thejoebourneidentity@github.com

One, our githubcustomers/ contact is already forwarding anything / setting up a call with the team as needed, and two, that is not a twitter profile I'd ever send a DM to in a professional context, considering you retweet a lot of people diametrically opposed to my existence.

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

#35

Post by mrclean8586 »

sascha_sl wrote: post #34
mrclean8586 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Product manager on the GitHub Actions team reporting in, we're sorry to hear about this issue with the rollout of ephemeral runners. Our engineering team is aware of this issue and is heavily prioritizing the investigation and fix. We'd love to look into your specific case if you want shoot me an email: thejoebourneidentity@github.com

One, our githubcustomers/ contact is already forwarding anything / setting up a call with the team as needed, and two, that is not a twitter profile I'd ever send a DM to in a professional context, considering you retweet a lot of people diametrically opposed to my existence.

I will check in with our githubcustomers group to help accelerate. I can also directly inform our engineering team if you're open to sending me your information at

thejoebourneidentity@github.com

Either way, we're looking into this issue and I'll post an update here once we've learned more.

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

#36

Post by RyJones »

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?

I use them with Hyperledger on a couple Mac Minis. They work fine.

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

#37

Post by hardwaresofton »

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…

And a more shameless second plug, I run SurplusCI which does the same thing for GitHub and GitLab with a few other platforms on the horizon.

I can say we're less than half the price, because we focus solely on dedicated hardware and dedicated compute. We're working onworking on pay-for-what-you-use as we speak, and this issue finally getting resolved has generated work for me this weekend.

[0]: https://surplusci.com

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

#38

Post by hardwaresofton »

It's a bit of an old drum to beat on but just want to note that GitLab has supported this (and provides docs for running on EC2, Fargate, k8s and other platforms like LXD[0][1][2][3]) for a very long time, and the CI system there is quite robust.

I've seen my fair share of CI systems (AppVeyor, CircleCI, GitLab, GitHub, TC, Jenkins, etc) and I'd argue that the GitLab CI is the best of all the ones I've seen:

- great syntax (it's YAML like most others but somewhat easy to organize well with great documentation)

- Fantastic documentation

- Unparalleled flexibility

- Unsurprising operation (things generally work as you'd expect)

- The ability to clear your build runner cache (Just ran into the inability to do this with CircleCI again today)

That said competition is a good thing so in general I'm glad to see this finally supported by GHA and dig into it over the weekend. GHA is making a lot of really good sustainable moves in the space and keeping the field open (their marketplace is the best) so I'm all for it.

I run SurplusCI[4] which does what you'd think (runs these runners in VMs) so getting this on-demand runners working happens bit top-of-mind, right now I only offer dedicated runners which are cheaper but of course aren't as cheap as on-demand (depending on usage).

Speaking of competition, just learned of a competitor here on HN in BuildJet[5], so if you don't want to manage your own runners check them out as well, unlike SurplusCI they actually offer to-the-minute on-demand runners, and the onboarding process looks way easier.

[EDIT] - Just to say, the list above is absolutely NOT the full list of platforms GitLab Runner supports -- it's pretty insane how many directions the community and GL have gone in. The Docker Machine integration (they maintain a fork) actually means you could run your single-use-machines on Scaleway or Hetzner easily as well, no need to muss or fuss with ASGs or k8s.

[0]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/configuration/runner_autoscal...

[1]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/configuration/runner_autoscal...

[2]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/executors/kubernetes.html

[3]: https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/executors/custom_examples/lxd...

[4]: https://surplusci.com

[5]: https://buildjet.com/for-github-actions

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

#39

Post by IshKebab »

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 runs on Windows, Linux and Mac surely? How much more portable do you need?

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

#40

Post by p8952 »

mrclean8586 wrote: post #35
sascha_sl wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One, our githubcustomers/ contact is already forwarding anything / setting up a call with the team as needed, and two, that is not a twitter profile I'd ever send a DM to in a professional context, considering you retweet a lot of people diametrically opposed to my existence.

I will check in with our githubcustomers group to help accelerate. I can also directly inform our engineering team if you're open to sending me your information at thejoebourneidentity@github.com Either way, we're looking into this issue and I'll post an update here once we've learned more.

Asking end users of your product to report issues via DM'ing your personal Twitter account, an account which is full of retweets of homophobic garbage, is really REALLY bad.

Quietly editing your comment after being called out to hide it is even worse.

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