Setup custom autoscale runner with better specs for k6 tests
As we progress on bigger environments that require larger throughputs (500/1000 RPS) for our testing we've recently found that the standard gitlab.com runners are too underpowered to run k6
at this scale. The default runners run on one of the smallest GCP VM types, n1-standard, and only have 1 cpu with around 3gb of memory. At this spec k6 will max out the 1 cpu at 1000 virtual users, which in terms of performance testing is still relatively low. In addition there are also some shared runners that are "highcpu" spec which also means they have minimal memory that can consequently cause k6 to also fail.
Task is to set up a custom autoscale runner on GCP for this project to be used with k6 tests so it has enough resources to handle larger scale as well as ensure it's reporting accurately.