Installing GitHub Enterprise Server on AWS

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 an AWS account capable of launching EC2 instances and creating EBS volumes. For more information, see the Amazon Web Services website.
• Most actions needed to launch your GitHub Enterprise Server instance may also be performed using the AWS management console. However, we recommend installing the AWS command line interface (CLI) for initial setup. Examples using the AWS CLI are included below. For more information, see Amazon's guides Working with the AWS Management Console and What is the AWS Command Line Interface.

This guide assumes you are familiar with the following AWS concepts:

• Launching EC2 Instances
• Managing EBS Volumes
• Using Security Groups (For managing network access to your instance)
• Elastic IP Addresses (EIP) (Strongly recommended for production environments)
• EC2 and Virtual Private Cloud (If you plan to launch into a Virtual Private Cloud)
• AWS Pricing (For calculating and managing costs)

For a diagram that provides an architectural overview, see the AWS Architecture Diagram for Deploying GitHub Enterprise Server.

This guide recommends the principle of least privilege when setting up your GitHub Enterprise Server instance on AWS. For more information, refer to the AWS Identity and Access Management (IAM) 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.

Determining the instance type

Before launching your GitHub Enterprise Server instance on AWS, you'll need to determine the machine type that best fits the needs of your organization. To review the minimum recommended requirements for GitHub Enterprise Server, see Minimum recommended requirements.

You can always scale up your CPU or memory by resizing your instance. Changing the resources available to your instance requires downtime for your users, so GitHub recommends over-provisioning resources to account for scale.

GitHub recommends a memory-optimized instance for GitHub Enterprise Server. For more information, see Amazon EC2 Instance Types on the Amazon EC2 website.

Selecting the GitHub Enterprise Server AMI

You can select an Amazon Machine Image (AMI) for GitHub Enterprise Server using the GitHub Enterprise Server portal or the AWS CLI.

AMIs for GitHub Enterprise Server are available in the AWS GovCloud (US-East and US-West) region. This allows US customers with specific regulatory requirements to run GitHub Enterprise Server in a federally compliant cloud environment. For more information on AWS's compliance with federal and other standards, see AWS's GovCloud (US) page and AWS's compliance page.

Using the GitHub Enterprise Server portal to select an AMI

1. 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.

2. Under "GitHub in the Cloud", select the "Select your platform" dropdown menu, and click Amazon Web Services.

3. Select the "Select your AWS region" drop-down menu, and click your desired region.

4. Take note of the AMI ID that is displayed.

Using the AWS CLI to select an AMI

1. Using the AWS CLI, get a list of GitHub Enterprise Server images published by GitHub's AWS owner IDs (025577942450 for GovCloud, and 895557238572 for other regions). For more information, see describe-images in the AWS documentation.

   aws ec2 describe-images \
   --owners OWNER_ID \
   --query 'sort_by(Images,&Name)[*].{Name:Name,ImageID:ImageId}' \
   --output=text
   

2. Take note of the AMI ID for the latest GitHub Enterprise Server image.

Creating a security group

If you're setting up your AMI for the first time, you will need to create a security group and add a new security group rule for each port in the table below. For more information, see the AWS guide Using Security Groups.

1. Using the AWS CLI, create a new security group. For more information, see create-security-group in the AWS documentation.

   aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name SECURITY_GROUP_NAME --description "SECURITY GROUP DESCRIPTION"
   

2. Take note of the security group ID (sg-xxxxxxxx) of your newly created security group.

3. Create a security group rule for each of the ports in the table below. We recommend opening network ports selectively based on the network services you need to expose for administrative and user purposes. For more information, see Network ports, and authorize-security-group-ingress in the AWS documentation.

   aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id SECURITY_GROUP_ID --protocol PROTOCOL --port PORT_NUMBER --cidr SOURCE IP RANGE
   

   This table identifies what each port is used for.

   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.

Creating the GitHub Enterprise Server instance

To create the instance, you'll need to launch an EC2 instance with your GitHub Enterprise Server AMI and attach an additional storage volume for your instance data. For more information, see Hardware considerations.

Launching an EC2 instance

In the AWS CLI, launch an EC2 instance using your AMI and the security group you created. Attach a new block device to use as a storage volume for your instance data, and configure the size based on your user license count. For more information, see run-instances in the AWS documentation.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --security-group-ids SECURITY_GROUP_ID \
  --instance-type INSTANCE_TYPE \
  --image-id AMI_ID \
  --block-device-mappings '[{"DeviceName":"/dev/xvdf","Ebs":{"VolumeSize":SIZE,"VolumeType":"TYPE"}}]' \
  --region REGION \
  --ebs-optimized

Allocating an Elastic IP and associating it with the instance

If this is a production instance, we strongly recommend allocating an Elastic IP (EIP) and associating it with the instance before proceeding to GitHub Enterprise Server configuration. Otherwise, the public IP address of the instance will not be retained after instance restarts. For more information, see Allocating an Elastic IP Address and Associating an Elastic IP Address with a Running Instance in the Amazon documentation.

Both primary and replica instances should be assigned separate EIPs in production High Availability configurations. For more information, see Configuring high availability.

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