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We've been running GitHub Enterprise Server (first on-prem, now in a Cloud VM) for many years. Size: low thousands of repos, less than a terabyte of total data.

We've been running GitHub Enterprise Server (first on-prem, now in a Cloud VM) for many years. Size: low thousands of repos, less than a terabyte of total data. Pros: Not affected by GitHub.com downtime; stability has generally been good for us; you have full control over the org and user names on the instance (instead of having to pick globally-unique ones on github.com); can sync licenses between GHES and github.com if you want to use some private repos on github.com; can raise your API rate limit as high as you want; probably cheaper to provide your own storage. Cons: New features from github.com can take months (or longer) to be released to GHES; many third-party integrations only work with github.com not GHES; if something goes down, it's now your fault; Actions requires bring-your-own self-hosted runners; autoscaling your self-hosted runners is non-trivial. The last point is probably the biggest negative for us. We're trying to use GitHub Actions more, but I don't really want to have to manage a pool of autoscaling runners. (I'm doing it, though.) If GitHub provided an add-on service to connect GitHub-managed cloud runners to GHES, I'd use it. (Needing to always keep code private and on-premises is not a requirement for us.)

pchernik 4y ago
Have you considered the "Enterprise Managed Users" feature? In my understanding this is where GitHub runs a separate instance of GitHub for you (i.e. it's not on public github.com) and one of the benefits (in my understanding) is things like globally-unique org names and such no longer applies.
- bgrainger 4y ago
  That's a good point: Enterprise Managed Users does solve the globally-unique-username issue, but comes with its own list of limitations: https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/identity-and-access-management/using-enterprise-managed-users-for-iam/about-enterprise-managed-users#abilities-and-restrictions-of-managed-user-accounts https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/ide... We concluded it was overkill for us (but we're not primarily using github.com anyway).

pchernik 4y ago

Have you considered the "Enterprise Managed Users" feature? In my understanding this is where GitHub runs a separate instance of GitHub for you (i.e. it's not on public github.com) and one of the benefits (in my understanding) is things like globally-unique org names and such no longer applies.

bgrainger 4y ago
That's a good point: Enterprise Managed Users does solve the globally-unique-username issue, but comes with its own list of limitations: https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/identity-and-access-management/using-enterprise-managed-users-for-iam/about-enterprise-managed-users#abilities-and-restrictions-of-managed-user-accounts https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-cloud@latest/admin/ide... We concluded it was overkill for us (but we're not primarily using github.com anyway).