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Selective synchronization

DETAILS: Tier: Premium, Ultimate Offering: Self-managed

Geo supports selective synchronization, which allows administrators to choose which projects should be synchronized by secondary sites. A subset of projects can be chosen, either by group or by storage shard. The former is ideal for replicating data belonging to a subset of users, while the latter is more suited to progressively rolling out Geo to a large GitLab instance.

NOTE: Geo's synchronization logic is outlined in the documentation. Both the solution and the documentation is subject to change from time to time. You must independently determine your legal obligations in regard to privacy and cybersecurity laws, and applicable trade control law on an ongoing basis.

Selective synchronization:

  1. Does not restrict permissions from secondary sites.
  2. Does not hide project metadata from secondary sites.
    • Since Geo relies on PostgreSQL replication, all project metadata gets replicated to secondary sites, but repositories that have not been selected are empty.
  3. Does not reduce the number of events generated for the Geo event log.
    • The primary site generates events as long as any secondary sites are present. Selective synchronization restrictions are implemented on the secondary sites, not the primary site.

Git operations on unreplicated repositories

Git clone, pull, and push operations over HTTP(S) and SSH are supported for repositories that exist on the primary site but not on secondary sites. This situation can occur when:

  • Selective synchronization does not include the project attached to the repository.
  • The repository is actively being replicated but has not completed yet.