Windows Shared Runners beta now available on GitLab.com

What this post added

Introduced Windows Shared Runners beta on GitLab.com, offering a fully-managed, auto-scaling, and secure environment for Windows CI/CD jobs. These runners are pre-configured with common software packages and utilize the custom executor, with each job running in an isolated VM instance that is deleted after completion. Pricing is initially aligned with Linux Runners, deducted from the Runner minute pool. Notable limitations include longer provisioning times (average 5 minutes) and longer pending queue times compared to Linux Shared Runners. The Windows Shared Runners do not use the Docker executor, meaning 'image' and 'services' cannot be specified in pipeline configurations. Users needing additional software not pre-installed must add installation commands to their scripts, which will be repeated for each job due to the ephemeral nature of the VMs.