gitlab-org--gitlab-foss/doc/user/admin_area/settings/usage_statistics.md

type
reference

Usage statistics (CORE ONLY)

GitLab Inc. will periodically collect information about your instance in order to perform various actions.

All statistics are opt-out, you can enable/disable them from the admin panel under Admin area > Settings > Metrics and profiling > Usage statistics.

Version Check (CORE ONLY)

If enabled, version check will inform you if a new version is available and the importance of it through a status. This is shown on the help page (i.e. /help) for all signed in users, and on the admin pages. The statuses are:

• Green: You are running the latest version of GitLab.
• Orange: An updated version of GitLab is available.
• Red: The version of GitLab you are running is vulnerable. You should install the latest version with security fixes as soon as possible.

GitLab Inc. collects your instance's version and hostname (through the HTTP referer) as part of the version check. No other information is collected.

This information is used, among other things, to identify to which versions patches will need to be backported, making sure active GitLab instances remain secure.

If you disable version check, this information will not be collected. Enable or disable the version check at Admin area > Settings > Metrics and profiling > Usage statistics.

Request flow example

The following example shows a basic request/response flow between the self-managed GitLab instance and the GitLab Version Application:

sequenceDiagram
    participant GitLab instance
    participant Version Application
    GitLab instance->>Version Application: Is there a version update?
    loop Version Check
        Version Application->>Version Application: Record version info
    end
    Version Application->>GitLab instance: Response (PNG/SVG)

Usage Ping (CORE ONLY)

Introduced in GitLab Enterprise Edition 8.10. More statistics were added in GitLab Enterprise Edition 8.12. Moved to GitLab Core in 9.1. More statistics were added in GitLab Ultimate 11.2.

GitLab sends a weekly payload containing usage data to GitLab Inc. The usage ping uses high-level data to help our product, support, and sales teams. It does not send any project names, usernames, or any other specific data. The information from the usage ping is not anonymous, it is linked to the hostname of the instance.

You can view the exact JSON payload in the administration panel. To view the payload:

1. Go to the Admin area (spanner symbol on the top bar).
2. Expand Settings in the left sidebar and click on Metrics and profiling.
3. Expand Usage statistics and click on the Preview payload button.

You can see how the usage ping data maps to different stages of the product.

Request flow example

The following example shows a basic request/response flow between the self-managed GitLab instance, GitLab Version Application, GitLab License Application and Salesforce:

sequenceDiagram
    participant GitLab instance
    participant Version Application
    participant License Application
    participant Salesforce
    GitLab instance->>Version Application: Usage Ping data
    loop Process Usage Data
        Version Application->>Version Application: Parse Usage Data
        Version Application->>Version Application: Record Usage Data
        Version Application->>Version Application: Update license ping time
    end
    Version Application-xLicense Application: Request Zuora subscription id
    License Application-xVersion Application: Zuora subscription id
    Version Application-xSalesforce: Request Zuora account id  by Zuora subscription id
    Salesforce-xVersion Application: Zuora account id
    Version Application-xSalesforce: Usage data for the Zuora account
    Version Application->>GitLab instance: Conversational Development Index

Deactivate the usage ping

The usage ping is opt-out. If you want to deactivate this feature, go to the Settings page of your administration panel and uncheck the Usage ping checkbox.

To disable the usage ping and prevent it from being configured in future through the administration panel, Omnibus installs can set the following in gitlab.rb:

gitlab_rails['usage_ping_enabled'] = false

And source installs can set the following in gitlab.yml:

production: &base
  # ...
  gitlab:
    # ...
    usage_ping_enabled: false

Instance statistics visibility (CORE ONLY)

Once usage ping is enabled, GitLab will gather data from other instances and will be able to show usage statistics of your instance to your users.

This can be restricted to admins by selecting "Only admins" in the Instance Statistics visibility section under Admin area > Settings > Metrics and profiling > Usage statistics.