[Feature flag] Rollout of `stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development`
Summary
This issue is to rollout the feature on production,
that is currently behind the stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development
feature flag.
See feature description at: #342605 (closed)
Owners
- Team: grouprunner
- Most appropriate slack channel to reach out to:
#f_runner_fleet_management
- Best individual to reach out to: @mrincon @pedropombeiro
- PM: @DarrenEastman
Stakeholders
- EM: @erushton
Expectations
What are we expecting to happen?
This is a highly requested feature: Users can very easily add runners but struggle removing them.
When is the feature viable?
- This is available for GitLab Ultimate users
- It is only available to Group owners.
- The group must have stale runners: Runners that have not connected in the past 3 months, or were created over 3 months ago and never connected.
What might happen if this goes wrong?
- Users may experience unexpected data loss if they expect stale runners to persist.
- Users may not easily find the list of auto-deleted runners
- Group owners may fail to communicate, leading to confusion around removed runners.
- Very large deletion jobs may carry some performance consequences.
What can we monitor to detect problems with this?
Consider mentioning checks for 5xx errors or other anomalies like an increase in redirects (302 HTTP response status)
@pedropombeiro would you be able to complete this section?
What can we check for monitoring production after rollouts?
Consider adding links to check for Sentry errors, Production logs for 5xx, 302s, etc.
Rollout Steps
Rollout on non-production environments
- Ensure that disabling this feature flag prevents more runners from being deleted.
- We should open a new fix for this @pedropombeiro @erushton
- Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to non-production environments.
-
/chatops run auto_deploy status 239d105bb1504190275513cace54944d895d4f10
-
-
Enable the feature globally on non-production environments. -
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development true --dev
-
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development true --staging
-
-
Verify that the feature works as expected. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable. The best environment to validate the feature in is staging-canary as this is the first environment deployed to. Note you will need to make sure you are configured to use canary as outlined here when accessing the staging environment in order to make sure you are testing appropriately.
Specific rollout on production
- Ensure that the feature MRs have been deployed to both production and canary.
-
/chatops run auto_deploy status 239d105bb1504190275513cace54944d895d4f10
-
- If you're using group-actor, you must enable the feature on these entries:
-
/chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-org stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development true
-
/chatops run feature set --group=gitlab-com stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development true
-
- We have determined a list of external groups that have large numbers of runners, these will be rolled out in a separate issue:
-
Verify that the feature works on the specific entries. Posting the QA result in this issue is preferable.
Preparation before global rollout
-
Check if the feature flag change needs to be accompanied with a change management issue. Cross link the issue here if it does. -
Ensure that you or a representative in development can be available for at least 2 hours after feature flag updates in production. If a different developer will be covering, or an exception is needed, please inform the oncall SRE by using the @sre-oncall
Slack alias. -
Ensure that documentation has been updated (More info). -
Announce on the feature issue an estimated time this will be enabled on GitLab.com. -
Ensure that any breaking changes have been announced following the release post process to ensure GitLab customers are aware. -
Notify #support_gitlab-com
and your team channel (more guidance when this is necessary in the dev docs).
Global rollout on production
For visibility, all /chatops
commands that target production should be executed in the #production
slack channel and cross-posted (with the command results) to the responsible team's slack channel (#g_TEAM_NAME
).
-
Incrementally roll out the feature. - If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
-
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development 25 --actors
-
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development 50 --actors
-
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development 75 --actors
-
- Enable the feature globally on production environment.
-
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development true
-
- If the feature flag in code has an actor, perform actor-based rollout.
-
Announce on the feature issue that the feature has been globally enabled. -
Wait for at least one day for the verification term.
Release the feature
After the feature has been deemed stable, the clean up should be done as soon as possible to permanently enable the feature and reduce complexity in the codebase.
You can either create a follow-up issue for Feature Flag Cleanup or use the checklist below in this same issue.
-
Create a merge request to remove stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development
feature flag. Ask for review and merge it.-
Remove all references to the feature flag from the codebase. -
Remove the YAML definitions for the feature from the repository. -
Create a changelog entry.
-
-
Ensure that the cleanup MR has been included in the release package. If the merge request was deployed before the monthly release was tagged, the feature can be officially announced in a release blog post. -
/chatops run release check https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/merge_requests/90026 15.1
-
-
Close the feature issue to indicate the feature will be released in the current milestone. -
If not already done, clean up the feature flag from all environments by running these chatops command in #production
channel:-
/chatops run feature delete stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development --dev
-
/chatops run feature delete stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development --staging
-
/chatops run feature delete stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development
-
-
Close this rollout issue.
Rollback Steps
-
This feature can be disabled by running the following Chatops command:
/chatops run feature set stale_runner_cleanup_for_namespace_development false
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