You can increase or change the amount of storage available for Git repositories, databases, search indexes, and other persistent application data.

Warning: The process for allocating new system resources varies by virtualization platform and resource type. You should always configure the monitoring and alerting of key system resources. For more information, see "Monitoring your GitHub Enterprise appliance."

As more users join your GitHub Enterprise instance, you may need to resize your storage volume. Refer to the documentation for your virtualization platform for information on resizing storage.

In this guide

Requirements and recommendations

Note: Before resizing the user storage volume, put your instance in maintenance mode. For more information, see "Enabling and scheduling maintenance mode."

We recommend different hardware configurations based on the number of seats used in your GitHub Enterprise instance.

Seats vCPUs Memory Attached storage Root storage
10-500 2 16 GB 100 GB 200 GB
500-3000 4 32 GB 250 GB 200 GB
3000-5000 8 64 GB 500 GB 200 GB
5000-8000 12 72 GB 750 GB 200 GB
8000-10000+ 16 128 GB 1000 GB 200 GB

These are minimum recommendations. More resources may be required depending on your usage, such as user activity and selected integrations.

Increasing the data partition size

  1. Resize the existing user volume disk using your virtualization platform's tools.

  2. SSH into your GitHub Enterprise instance.

    ssh -p 122 admin@HOSTNAME

  3. Put the appliance in maintenance mode. For more information, see "Enabling and scheduling maintenance mode."

  4. Reboot the appliance to detect the new storage allocation.
  5. Run the ghe-storage-extend command to expand the /data filesystem: 
    ghe-storage-extend

Increasing the root partition size using a new appliance

  1. Set up a new GitHub Enterprise with a larger root disk using the same version as your current appliance. For more information, see "Setting up a GitHub Enterprise instance."
  2. Shut down the current appliance.
  3. Detach the data disk from the current appliance using your virtualization platform's tools.
  4. Attach the data disk to the new appliance with the larger root disk.

Increasing the root partition size using an existing appliance

  1. Attach a new disk to your GitHub Enterprise appliance.

  2. Run the parted command to format the disk:

    sudo parted /dev/xvdg mklabel msdos
sudo parted /dev/xvdg mkpart primary ext4 0% 50%
sudo parted /dev/xvdg mkpart primary ext4 50% 100%

  3. Run the ghe-upgrade command to install a full, platform specific package to the newly partitioned disk. A universal hotpatch upgrade package, such as github-enterprise-2.11.9.hpkg, will not work as expected.

    ghe-upgrade PACKAGE-NAME.pkg -s -t /dev/xvdg1

  4. Shut down the appliance.

  5. In the hypervisor, remove the old root disk and attach the new root disk at the same location as the old root disk.
  6. Start the appliance.