gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/user/admin_area/geo_nodes.md

stage	group	info	type
Enablement	Geo	To determine the technical writer assigned to the Stage/Group associated with this page, see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/technical-writing/#assignments	howto

Geo sites Admin Area (PREMIUM SELF)

You can configure various settings for GitLab Geo sites. For more information, see Geo documentation.

On either the primary or secondary site:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Geo > Nodes.

Common settings

All Geo sites have the following settings:

Setting	Description
Primary	This marks a Geo site as primary site. There can be only one primary site.
Name	The unique identifier for the Geo site. It's highly recommended to use a physical location as a name. Good examples are "London Office" or "us-east-1". Avoid words like "primary", "secondary", "Geo", or "DR". This makes the failover process easier because the physical location does not change, but the Geo site role can. All nodes in a single Geo site use the same site name. Nodes use the gitlab_rails['geo_node_name'] setting in /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb to lookup their Geo site record in the PostgreSQL database. If gitlab_rails['geo_node_name'] is not set, then the node's external_url with trailing slash is used as fallback. The value of Name is case-sensitive, and most characters are allowed.
URL	The instance's user-facing URL.

The site you're currently browsing is indicated with a blue Current label, and the primary node is listed first as Primary site.

Secondary site settings

Secondary sites have a number of additional settings available:

Setting	Description
Selective synchronization	Enable Geo selective sync for this secondary site.
Repository sync capacity	Number of concurrent requests this secondary site will make to the primary site when backfilling repositories.
File sync capacity	Number of concurrent requests this secondary site will make to the primary site when backfilling files.

Geo backfill

Secondary sites are notified of changes to repositories and files by the primary site, and will always attempt to synchronize those changes as quickly as possible.

Backfill is the act of populating the secondary site with repositories and files that existed before the secondary site was added to the database. Since there may be extremely large numbers of repositories and files, it's infeasible to attempt to download them all at once, so GitLab places an upper limit on the concurrency of these operations.

How long the backfill takes is a function of the maximum concurrency, but higher values place more strain on the primary site. From GitLab 10.2, the limits are configurable. If your primary site has lots of surplus capacity, you can increase the values to complete backfill in a shorter time. If it's under heavy load and backfill is reducing its availability for normal requests, you can decrease them.

Using a different URL for synchronization

The primary site's Internal URL is used by secondary sites to contact it (to sync repositories, for example). The name Internal URL distinguishes it from External URL which is used by users. Internal URL does not need to be a private address.

Internal URL defaults to external URL, but you can also customize it:

1. On the top bar, select Menu > Admin.
2. On the left sidebar, select Geo > Nodes.
3. Select Edit on the site you want to customize.
4. Edit the internal URL.
5. Select Save changes.

WARNING: We recommend using an HTTPS connection while configuring the Geo sites. To avoid breaking communication between primary and secondary sites when using HTTPS, customize your Internal URL to point to a load balancer with TLS terminated at the load balancer.

WARNING: Starting with GitLab 13.3 and until 13.11, using an internal URL that is not accessible to the users will result in the OAuth authorization flow not working properly, as the users will get redirected to the internal URL instead of the external one.

Multiple secondary sites behind a load balancer

In GitLab 11.11, secondary sites can use identical external URLs as long as a unique name is set for each Geo site. The gitlab.rb setting gitlab_rails['geo_node_name'] must:

• Be set for each GitLab instance that runs puma, sidekiq, or geo_logcursor.
• Match a Geo site name.

The load balancer must use sticky sessions in order to avoid authentication failures and cross site request errors.