Installing GitHub Enterprise Server on OpenStack KVM

Prerequisites

• You must have a GitHub Enterprise license file. To download an existing license file or request a trial license, visit enterprise.github.com. For more information, see "Managing your GitHub Enterprise license."
• 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 requirements
• Storage
• CPU and memory

Minimum 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 requirements, your instance will perform and scale better.

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."

You can resize your instance's root disk by building a new instance or using an existing instance. For more information, see "Increasing storage capacity."

CPU and memory

GitHub Enterprise Server requires more CPU and memory resources depending on levels of activity for users, automations, and integrations.

When you increase CPU resources, we recommend 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.

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. Navigate to the GitHub Enterprise Server download page.
2. To download your license file, click Download license.
3. Click Get the latest release of GitHub Enterprise Server.
4. Select GitHub On-premises, then click OpenStack KVM (QCOW2).
5. 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. 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.
   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

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 GitHub Enterprise license."
3. In the Management Console, configure and save your desired settings. For more information, see "Configuring the GitHub Enterprise Server appliance."
4. The instance will restart automatically.
5. Click Visit your instance.

Further reading

• "System overview"