Configuring Sidekiq (FREE SELF)

This section discusses how to configure an external Sidekiq instance using the bundled Sidekiq in the GitLab package.

Sidekiq requires connection to the Redis, PostgreSQL and Gitaly instance. To configure the Sidekiq node:

  1. SSH into the Sidekiq server.

  2. Download/install the Omnibus GitLab package you want using steps 1 and 2 from the GitLab downloads page. Do not complete any other steps on the download page.

  3. Open /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb with your editor.

  4. Generate the Sidekiq configuration:

    sidekiq['listen_address'] = "10.10.1.48"
    
    ## Optional: Enable extra Sidekiq processes
    sidekiq_cluster['enable'] = true
    sidekiq['queue_groups'] = [
      "elastic_commit_indexer",
      "*"
    ]
  5. Setup Sidekiq's connection to Redis:

    ## Must be the same in every sentinel node
    redis['master_name'] = 'gitlab-redis'
    
    ## The same password for Redis authentication you set up for the master node.
    redis['master_password'] = 'YOUR_PASSOWORD'
    
    ## A list of sentinels with `host` and `port`
    gitlab_rails['redis_sentinels'] = [
        {'host' => '10.10.1.34', 'port' => 26379},
        {'host' => '10.10.1.35', 'port' => 26379},
        {'host' => '10.10.1.36', 'port' => 26379},
      ]
  6. Set up Sidekiq's connection to Gitaly:

    git_data_dirs({
      'default' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tcp://gitaly:8075' },
    })
    gitlab_rails['gitaly_token'] = 'YOUR_TOKEN'
  7. Set up Sidekiq's connection to PostgreSQL:

    gitlab_rails['db_host'] = '10.10.1.30'
    gitlab_rails['db_password'] = 'YOUR_PASSOWORD'
    gitlab_rails['db_port'] = '5432'
    gitlab_rails['db_adapter'] = 'postgresql'
    gitlab_rails['db_encoding'] = 'unicode'
    gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false

    Remember to add the Sidekiq nodes to PostgreSQL's trusted addresses:

    postgresql['trust_auth_cidr_addresses'] = %w(127.0.0.1/32 10.10.1.30/32 10.10.1.31/32 10.10.1.32/32 10.10.1.33/32 10.10.1.38/32)
  8. If you run multiple Sidekiq nodes with a shared file storage, such as NFS, you must specify the UIDs and GIDs to ensure they match between servers. Specifying the UIDs and GIDs prevents permissions issues in the file system. This advice is similar to the advice for Geo setups:

    user['uid'] = 9000
    user['gid'] = 9000
    web_server['uid'] = 9001
    web_server['gid'] = 9001
    registry['uid'] = 9002
    registry['gid'] = 9002
  9. Disable other services:

    nginx['enable'] = false
    grafana['enable'] = false
    prometheus['enable'] = false
    gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
    alertmanager['enable'] = false
    gitaly['enable'] = false
    gitlab_monitor['enable'] = false
    gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
    nginx['enable'] = false
    postgres_exporter['enable'] = false
    postgresql['enable'] = false
    redis['enable'] = false
    redis_exporter['enable'] = false
    puma['enable'] = false
    gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false
  10. If you're using the Container Registry and it's running on a different node than Sidekiq, then configure the registry URL:

    registry_external_url 'https://registry.example.com'
    gitlab_rails['registry_api_url'] = "https://registry.example.com"

    You must also copy the registry.key file to each Sidekiq node.

  11. Define the external_url. To maintain uniformity of links across nodes, the external_url on the Sidekiq server should point to the external URL that users will use to access GitLab. This will either be the external_url set on your application server or the URL of a external load balancer which will route traffic to the GitLab application server:

    external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'
  12. Run gitlab-ctl reconfigure.

You will need to restart the Sidekiq nodes after an update has occurred and database migrations performed.

Example configuration

Here's what the ending /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb would look like:

########################################
#####        Services Disabled       ###
########################################

nginx['enable'] = false
grafana['enable'] = false
prometheus['enable'] = false
gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false
alertmanager['enable'] = false
gitaly['enable'] = false
gitlab_workhorse['enable'] = false
nginx['enable'] = false
postgres_exporter['enable'] = false
postgresql['enable'] = false
redis['enable'] = false
redis_exporter['enable'] = false
puma['enable'] = false
gitlab_exporter['enable'] = false

########################################
####              Redis              ###
########################################

## Must be the same in every sentinel node
redis['master_name'] = 'gitlab-redis'

## The same password for Redis authentication you set up for the master node.
redis['master_password'] = 'YOUR_PASSOWORD'

## A list of sentinels with `host` and `port`
gitlab_rails['redis_sentinels'] = [
    {'host' => '10.10.1.34', 'port' => 26379},
    {'host' => '10.10.1.35', 'port' => 26379},
    {'host' => '10.10.1.36', 'port' => 26379},
  ]

#######################################
###              Gitaly             ###
#######################################

git_data_dirs({
  'default' => { 'gitaly_address' => 'tcp://gitaly:8075' },
})
gitlab_rails['gitaly_token'] = 'YOUR_TOKEN'

#######################################
###            Postgres             ###
#######################################
gitlab_rails['db_host'] = '10.10.1.30'
gitlab_rails['db_password'] = 'YOUR_PASSOWORD'
gitlab_rails['db_port'] = '5432'
gitlab_rails['db_adapter'] = 'postgresql'
gitlab_rails['db_encoding'] = 'unicode'
gitlab_rails['auto_migrate'] = false

#######################################
###      Sidekiq configuration      ###
#######################################
sidekiq['listen_address'] = "10.10.1.48"

#######################################
###     Monitoring configuration    ###
#######################################
consul['enable'] = true
consul['monitoring_service_discovery'] =  true

consul['configuration'] = {
  bind_addr: '10.10.1.48',
  retry_join: %w(10.10.1.34 10.10.1.35 10.10.1.36)
}

# Set the network addresses that the exporters will listen on
node_exporter['listen_address'] = '10.10.1.48:9100'

# Rails Status for prometheus
gitlab_rails['monitoring_whitelist'] = ['10.10.1.42', '127.0.0.1']

# Container Registry URL for cleanup jobs
registry_external_url 'https://registry.example.com'
gitlab_rails['registry_api_url'] = "https://registry.example.com"

# External URL (this should match the URL used to access your GitLab instance)
external_url 'https://gitlab.example.com'

Further reading

Related Sidekiq configuration:

  1. Extra Sidekiq processes
  2. Extra Sidekiq routing
  3. Using the GitLab-Sidekiq chart