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Whenever GitHub is down you see comments saying much the same thing only with the names reversed. The thing that strikes me each time is how fragile everyone's

Whenever GitHub is down you see comments saying much the same thing only with the names reversed. The thing that strikes me each time is how fragile everyone's setup is if GitHub/lab is a single point of failure for them... At least gitlab let's you self host, which would let you run backups on offsite hosting meaning zero downtime.

protomikron 7y ago
GitHub's uptime is way better than GitLab. I am not really sure gitlab.com even reaches 99% availability (not to mention 99.9%). GitLab may well be focused on providing full-stack dev-services (VCS, build-server, CI and stuff), but in the end they are a hosting company - and for hosting, uptime is one of the most important metrics. EDIT: 99% was exaggerating, but I got so many 50Xs the last days that it was from time to time unusable.
- tristanperry 7y ago
  I agree that GitHub's uptime is better, but I doubt that Gitlab aren't at 99% availability - that'd mean over 14.4 minutes of downtime each day.
  - toupeira 7y ago
    We have some public Pingdom stats at http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/history http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/history, looks like this was the first time we dipped below 99.9% this year (partial outages excluded). But yeah, our response times have been steadily increasing and could definitely be a lot better ;-)
- lbotos 7y ago
  You can see GitLab.com's uptime here via pingdom: http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/11 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/11 (99.75%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/10 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/10 (99.98%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/09 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/09 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/08 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/08 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/07 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/07 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/06 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/06 (99.98%) EDIT: I see one of my colleagues also posted here, I wasn't asked to and I'm doing it of my own accord. I assume they are as well, but I can only speak for myself.
  - protomikron 7y ago
    Ok, I admit that 99% was exaggerating, but you sure should make availability of gitlab.com your main focus - and you promise that for years to the users (linking at issues etc.). Btw.: Your links are http, and the https version has `SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN` - you should check with pingdom.com maybe?
jlengrand 7y ago
Agreed, nobody's perfect. My experience with github is much better though on average. Haven't had a single bad experience personally the past year for my personal stuff. Not once. Github does only one thing, the CI is usually somewhere else so there have less reasons to fail as well... It might be comparing apples and oranges. We use Gitlab at the office and it is constantly slow. Might be our setup I agree, but in the end it also tarnishes the brand to me. All in all, my general experience is that speed and stability has degraded over the past years, in favor of the 'whole in one devops pipeline'. Github stayed focus on its core market.
- mikekchar 7y ago
  To be fair, Over the last 5 years, I've been hit by several Github outages and never been hit with a Gitlab outage. The reason? I don't use Gitlab during my working day. Similarly with this one, I wasn't doing anything on Gitlab when it went down.
  - jlengrand 7y ago
    Interesting. My issues have been in the evening :). Are you in the US? I am EU based
    - mikekchar 7y ago
      I'm in Japan :-)
- lima 7y ago
  >Github does only one thing, the CI is usually somewhere else so there have less reasons to fail as well... It might be comparing apples and oranges. This is changing with Github Actions.
  - jlengrand 7y ago
    > This is changing with Github Actions. Well gitlab does artifactory/docker management, security, value stream management, . . . So still
ramchip 7y ago
Github also supports self-hosting.
- yreg 7y ago
  Yes, https://github.com/enterprise https://github.com/enterprise
- jlengrand 7y ago
  Sure, it is unfortunately above the monthly budget that my wife allows me to spend :)
- apple4ever 7y ago
  Yes but not for free.
maze-le 7y ago
>> At least gitlab let's you self host, which would let you run backups on offsite hosting meaning zero downtime. Zero downtime but not zero maintainence cost. I think the administration of a full CI/CD environment (not only the gitlab machine, also the runners, the network etc.) are the main factor for this.
caseymarquis 7y ago
Given git's distributed nature, I can't imagine either service going down for a day could have that enormous of an impact. I'd be curious to know how people manage that. I would think other services which point to git.* would largely have some option for a manual work around, or would not be utilized in mission critical roles.
- pgt 7y ago
  Continuous integration is typically not distributed, and it blocks releases.
- edejong 7y ago
  But git is not truly distributed. Each 'node' in the network does not automatically gets access to new trusted nodes (remotes). Management of the distributed nature is still manual, meaning that your CI/CD system cannot suddenly pull changes from your local developer machine, instead of GitHub/GitLab/Gerrit/... In an ideal world, each commit is cryptographically signed and automatically distributed to a large number of nodes. Only correctly signed commits would be picked up by CI/CD and the build artifacts would use the digital signature of the code to further deploy the resources in a trustworthy manner.
- manigandham 7y ago
  Its mostly about the project management, issue tracking, pull requests, CI/CD, releases and other features being unavailable. Not the source code itself.
frutiger 7y ago
GitHub also lets you self-host.
Cthulhu_ 7y ago
Zero downtime is an ideal that you'd need a lot of investment for to achieve. I mean for 99.99999% uptime you'd already need to have a multi-server, multi-AZ, multi-region and multi-cloud setup and orchestrate data parity between those environments. That's not easy to set up and maintain.
- kungtotte 7y ago
  Yes. Tell that to all the companies that have to stop working when either of these sites go down because they've built their entire workflow on GitHub/lab being up. Since zero downtime is so costly, maybe it's a better idea not to rely on the uptime of a third party?
  - KptMarchewa 7y ago
    You're wrongly assuming that your own service will have a better uptime.

protomikron 7y ago

GitHub's uptime is way better than GitLab. I am not really sure gitlab.com even reaches 99% availability (not to mention 99.9%). GitLab may well be focused on providing full-stack dev-services (VCS, build-server, CI and stuff), but in the end they are a hosting company - and for hosting, uptime is one of the most important metrics. EDIT: 99% was exaggerating, but I got so many 50Xs the last days that it was from time to time unusable.

tristanperry 7y ago
I agree that GitHub's uptime is better, but I doubt that Gitlab aren't at 99% availability - that'd mean over 14.4 minutes of downtime each day.
- toupeira 7y ago
  We have some public Pingdom stats at http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/history http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/history, looks like this was the first time we dipped below 99.9% this year (partial outages excluded). But yeah, our response times have been steadily increasing and could definitely be a lot better ;-)
lbotos 7y ago
You can see GitLab.com's uptime here via pingdom: http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/11 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/11 (99.75%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/10 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/10 (99.98%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/09 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/09 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/08 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/08 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/07 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/07 (100%) http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/06 http://stats.gitlab.com/4932705/2019/06 (99.98%) EDIT: I see one of my colleagues also posted here, I wasn't asked to and I'm doing it of my own accord. I assume they are as well, but I can only speak for myself.
- protomikron 7y ago
  Ok, I admit that 99% was exaggerating, but you sure should make availability of gitlab.com your main focus - and you promise that for years to the users (linking at issues etc.). Btw.: Your links are http, and the https version has `SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN` - you should check with pingdom.com maybe?

jlengrand 7y ago

Agreed, nobody's perfect. My experience with github is much better though on average. Haven't had a single bad experience personally the past year for my personal stuff. Not once. Github does only one thing, the CI is usually somewhere else so there have less reasons to fail as well... It might be comparing apples and oranges. We use Gitlab at the office and it is constantly slow. Might be our setup I agree, but in the end it also tarnishes the brand to me. All in all, my general experience is that speed and stability has degraded over the past years, in favor of the 'whole in one devops pipeline'. Github stayed focus on its core market.

mikekchar 7y ago
To be fair, Over the last 5 years, I've been hit by several Github outages and never been hit with a Gitlab outage. The reason? I don't use Gitlab during my working day. Similarly with this one, I wasn't doing anything on Gitlab when it went down.
- jlengrand 7y ago
  Interesting. My issues have been in the evening :). Are you in the US? I am EU based
  - mikekchar 7y ago
    I'm in Japan :-)
lima 7y ago
>Github does only one thing, the CI is usually somewhere else so there have less reasons to fail as well... It might be comparing apples and oranges. This is changing with Github Actions.
- jlengrand 7y ago
  > This is changing with Github Actions. Well gitlab does artifactory/docker management, security, value stream management, . . . So still

ramchip 7y ago

Github also supports self-hosting.

yreg 7y ago
Yes, https://github.com/enterprise https://github.com/enterprise
jlengrand 7y ago
Sure, it is unfortunately above the monthly budget that my wife allows me to spend :)
apple4ever 7y ago
Yes but not for free.

maze-le 7y ago

>> At least gitlab let's you self host, which would let you run backups on offsite hosting meaning zero downtime. Zero downtime but not zero maintainence cost. I think the administration of a full CI/CD environment (not only the gitlab machine, also the runners, the network etc.) are the main factor for this.

caseymarquis 7y ago

Given git's distributed nature, I can't imagine either service going down for a day could have that enormous of an impact. I'd be curious to know how people manage that. I would think other services which point to git.* would largely have some option for a manual work around, or would not be utilized in mission critical roles.

pgt 7y ago
Continuous integration is typically not distributed, and it blocks releases.
edejong 7y ago
But git is not truly distributed. Each 'node' in the network does not automatically gets access to new trusted nodes (remotes). Management of the distributed nature is still manual, meaning that your CI/CD system cannot suddenly pull changes from your local developer machine, instead of GitHub/GitLab/Gerrit/... In an ideal world, each commit is cryptographically signed and automatically distributed to a large number of nodes. Only correctly signed commits would be picked up by CI/CD and the build artifacts would use the digital signature of the code to further deploy the resources in a trustworthy manner.
manigandham 7y ago
Its mostly about the project management, issue tracking, pull requests, CI/CD, releases and other features being unavailable. Not the source code itself.

frutiger 7y ago

GitHub also lets you self-host.

Cthulhu_ 7y ago

Zero downtime is an ideal that you'd need a lot of investment for to achieve. I mean for 99.99999% uptime you'd already need to have a multi-server, multi-AZ, multi-region and multi-cloud setup and orchestrate data parity between those environments. That's not easy to set up and maintain.

kungtotte 7y ago
Yes. Tell that to all the companies that have to stop working when either of these sites go down because they've built their entire workflow on GitHub/lab being up. Since zero downtime is so costly, maybe it's a better idea not to rely on the uptime of a third party?
- KptMarchewa 7y ago
  You're wrongly assuming that your own service will have a better uptime.