Installing GitHub Enterprise Server on XenServer

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 install the XenServer Hypervisor on the machine that will run your GitHub Enterprise Server virtual machine (VM). We support versions 6.0 through 7.0.
• We recommend using the XenCenter Windows Management Console for initial setup. Instructions using the XenCenter Windows Management Console are included below. For more information, see the Citrix guide "How to Download and Install a New Version of XenCenter."

Hardware considerations

• Minimum requirements
• Beta features in GitHub Enterprise Server 2.22
• 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.

User licenses	vCPUs	Memory	Attached storage	Root storage
Trial, demo, or 10 light users	2 or 4	16 GB or 32 GB	100 GB or 150 GB	200 GB
10 to 3,000	4 or 8	32 GB or 48 GB	250 GB or 300 GB	200 GB
3,000 to 5000	8 or 12	64 GB	500 GB	200 GB
5,000 to 8000	12 or 16	96 GB	750 GB	200 GB
8,000 to 10,000+	16 or 20	128 GB or 160 GB	1000 GB	200 GB

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

Beta features in GitHub Enterprise Server 2.22

GitHub Enterprise Server 2.22 offered features in beta, such as GitHub Actions, GitHub Packages, and code scanning. For more information, see the GitHub Enterprise Server 2.22 release notes.

If you enabled beta features for GitHub Enterprise Server 2.22, your instance requires additional hardware resources. For more information about minimum requirements, see "Minimum requirements."

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

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 the beta of 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.

If you enabled the beta of 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, 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.

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

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 XenServer (VHD).
5. To download your license file, click Download license.

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 XenCenter, import the GitHub Enterprise Server image you downloaded. For instructions, see the XenCenter guide "Import Disk Images."
   • For the "Enable Operating System Fixup" step, select Don't use Operating System Fixup.
   • Leave the VM powered off when you're finished.
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 XenCenter guide "Add Virtual Disks."

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 license for GitHub Enterprise."
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"