Installing GitHub Enterprise Server on OpenStack KVM

Prerequisites

• You must have a GitHub Enterprise license file. For more information, see Setting up a trial of GitHub Enterprise Server and About licenses for GitHub Enterprise.
• You must have access to an installation of OpenStack Horizon, the web-based user interface to OpenStack services. For more information, see the Horizon documentation.

Hardware considerations

• Minimum recommended requirements
• Storage
• CPU and memory

Minimum recommended requirements

We recommend different hardware configurations depending on the number of user licenses for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance. If you provision more resources than the minimum recommended requirements, your instance will perform and scale better.

User licenses	x86-64 vCPUs	Memory	Root storage	Attached (data) storage	IOPS
Trial, demo, or 10 light users	4	32 GB	400 GB	500 GB	600
Up to 1,000	8	48 GB	400 GB	500 GB	3000
1,000 to 3,000	16	64 GB	400 GB	1000 GB	6000
3,000 to 5,000	32	128 GB	400 GB	1500 GB	9000
5,000 to 8,000	48	256 GB	400 GB	3000 GB	12000
8,000 to 10,000+	64	512 GB	400 GB	5000 GB	15000

If you plan to enable GitHub Actions or GitHub Advanced Security for the users of your instance, more resources are required.

• GitHub Actions - increase both CPU and memory by at least 25%
• GitHub Advanced Security - increase both CPU and memory by at least 25%

These adjustments should be applied to the base requirements for each user tier. We recommend monitoring all changes to your resources, as further increases may be needed.

For more information about these requirements, see Getting started with GitHub Actions for GitHub Enterprise Server.

If you plan to enable Container registry for the users of your instance, more resources are required. For more information about these requirements, see Getting started with GitHub Packages for your enterprise.

For more information about adjusting resources for an existing instance, see Increasing storage capacity and Increasing CPU or memory resources.

Storage

We recommend a high-performance SSD with high input/output operations per second (IOPS) and low latency for GitHub Enterprise Server. Workloads are I/O intensive. If you use a bare metal hypervisor, we recommend directly attaching the disk or using a disk from a storage area network (SAN).

Your instance requires a persistent data disk separate from the root disk. For more information, see System overview.

To configure GitHub Actions, you must provide external blob storage. For more information, see Getting started with GitHub Actions for GitHub Enterprise Server.

The available space on the root filesystem will be 50% of the total disk size. You can resize your instance's root disk by building a new instance or using an existing instance. For more information, see System overview and Increasing storage capacity.

CPU and memory

The CPU and memory resources that GitHub Enterprise Server requires depend on the levels of activity for users, automations, and integrations.

Any VMs you provision for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance must use the x86-64 CPU architecture. Other architectures are not supported, such as AArch64 or arm64.

If you plan to enable GitHub Actions for the users of your GitHub Enterprise Server instance, you may need to provision additional CPU and memory resources for your instance. For more information, see Getting started with GitHub Actions for GitHub Enterprise Server.

When you increase CPU resources, GitHub recommends adding at least 6.5 GB of memory for each vCPU (up to 16 vCPUs) that you provision for the instance. When you use more than 16 vCPUs, you don't need to add 6.5 GB of memory for each vCPU, but you should monitor your instance to ensure it has enough memory.

For more information about monitoring the capacity and performance of GitHub Enterprise Server, see Monitoring your instance.

You can increase your instance's CPU or memory resources. For more information, see Increasing CPU or memory resources.

Downloading the GitHub Enterprise Server image

1. Download your license. For more information, see Downloading your license for GitHub Enterprise.

2. Navigate to the image you want to use for your new instance.

   • Navigate to Release notes.
   • In the right sidebar, click the version you want to download.
   • Click Download GitHub Enterprise Server X.X.X.

3. Under "GitHub On-premises", select the "Select your hypervisor" dropdown menu and click OpenStack KVM (QCOW2).

4. Click Download for OpenStack KVM (QCOW2).

Creating the GitHub Enterprise Server instance

To create the instance, you'll need to import the GitHub Enterprise Server image to your virtual machine and attach an additional storage volume for your instance data. For more information, see Hardware considerations.

1. In OpenStack Horizon, upload the GitHub Enterprise Server image you downloaded. For instructions, see the "Upload an image" section of the OpenStack guide Upload and manage images.

2. Create a new virtual disk to use as an attached storage volume for your instance data, and configure the size based on your user license count. If reusing an existing disk, ensure that the disk is empty and there are no partitions. For instructions, see the OpenStack guide Create and manage volumes.

3. Create a security group, and add a new security group rule for each port in the table below. For instructions, see the OpenStack guide Configure access and security for instances.

   Port	Service	Description
   22	SSH	Git over SSH access. Clone, fetch, and push operations to public/private repositories supported.
   25	SMTP	SMTP with encryption (STARTTLS) support.
   80	HTTP	Web application access. All requests are redirected to the HTTPS port when SSL is enabled.
   122	SSH	Instance shell access. The default SSH port (22) is dedicated to application git+ssh network traffic.
   161/UDP	SNMP	Required for network monitoring protocol operation.
   443	HTTPS	Web application and Git over HTTPS access.
   1194/UDP	VPN	Secure replication network tunnel in high availability configuration. Encrypted using WireGuard.
   8080	HTTP	Plain-text web based Management Console. Not required unless SSL is disabled manually.
   8443	HTTPS	Secure web based Management Console. Required for basic installation and configuration.
   9418	Git	Simple Git protocol port. Clone and fetch operations to public repositories only. Unencrypted network communication. If you have enabled private mode on your instance, then opening this port is only required if you also enabled anonymous Git read access. For more information, see Enforcing repository management policies in your enterprise.

4. Optionally, associate a floating IP to the instance. Depending on your OpenStack setup, you may need to allocate a floating IP to the project and associate it to the instance. Contact your system administrator to determine if this is the case for you. For more information, see Allocate a floating IP address to an instance in the OpenStack documentation.

5. Launch your GitHub Enterprise Server instance using the image, data volume, and security group created in the previous steps. For instructions, see the OpenStack guide Launch and manage instances.

Configuring the GitHub Enterprise Server instance

To configure the instance, you must upload a license file, set the root Management Console password, configure the instance's settings, and restart the instance.

1. Copy the virtual machine's public DNS name, and paste it into a web browser.
2. At the prompt, upload your license file and set a management console password. For more information, see Managing your license for GitHub Enterprise.
3. In the Management Console, configure and save your desired settings. For more information, see Configuring GitHub Enterprise.
4. The instance will restart automatically.
5. Click Visit your instance.

Further reading

• System overview
• About upgrades to new releases