GitLab's unconventional journey to CI/CD and Kubernetes

What this post added

This post details GitLab's unconventional journey from feature freezes to continuous delivery (CD) and the subsequent migration to Kubernetes. It highlights the inefficiencies of the previous release process, including feature freeze periods and manual release tasks, and quantifies the time spent by the Delivery team on these activities. The post explains GitLab's strategy of first building a CD system using existing tools and reorganizing infrastructure to 'stress test' the current system before migrating to Kubernetes. This approach aimed to expose and stabilize application weaknesses, strengthen the application, and foster a cultural shift towards a CD mindset among engineers. The new CD process automates 90% of the release process, with a focus on automated QA, progressive rollouts, and on-call rotations for developers. Key technical challenges identified include ensuring sufficient QA coverage and communicating process changes across engineering teams.