What are Gitlab Runner minimal hardware requirements?

Heya,

GitLab Runner itself doesn’t require a lot of resources to function. However, the actual requirements will depend on what kind of jobs the Runner will be executing. If you’re running simple scripts or tasks that don’t consume a lot of memory or CPU, a small droplet might suffice.

GitLab’s documentation does not provide a strict minimum requirement for the Runner itself. However, there are a few things to consider:

1. Runner Overhead: GitLab Runner’s own overhead is quite low. It’s lightweight in nature.

2. Job Requirements: This is the main thing to consider. For instance, if you’re using the Runner to execute CI/CD tasks that build large software projects, the requirements will be much higher compared to running small shell scripts.

3. Docker: If you’re using the Docker executor with GitLab Runner, you’ll also need to account for Docker’s resource usage. While Docker itself doesn’t need a lot of resources, each container you run will consume memory and CPU based on what’s running inside it.

4. 512MB RAM Considerations: A droplet with 512MB of RAM is on the lower end. If you’re using Docker, this might be too little, especially after accounting for the OS and other system processes. If your CI/CD jobs are lightweight, you might get away with it, but there’s a risk of running into out-of-memory (OOM) errors during more intensive tasks.

5. Swap Space: If you decide to go with 512MB, it’s recommended to have a swap space. Swap can prevent abrupt crashes due to OOM conditions. However, relying on swap is not a replacement for having adequate RAM, especially for memory-intensive tasks, as swap space on a disk is significantly slower than RAM.

Wih that said, you can start with the smallest Droplet and upgrade whenever necessary. Don’t Forget to Add SWAP - https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-space-on-ubuntu-20-04