In our VNClagoon development best practice, Continuous integration (CI) – allowing our developers to frequently merge code changes into a central VNClagoon repository – is a convenient workflow. But it also produces lots of build images that can easily take much space. Way too much. And it gets messy over time. So it was time for our DevOps experts to look for a tool or element which can help keeping the flow tidy.
At VNC we build hundreds of images each day, enabling us to rapidly test and deploy a large number of new VNClagoon releases for our partners and customers. What did we find to solve our CI requirement, especially on GCP (Google Cloud Platform)? GCR (Google Container Registry) didn’t have a retention policy like most other PaaS container registries. Unfortunately, unlike ECR and ACR (Amazon’s and Azure’s respective PaaS container registry offerings), GCP (Google Cloud Platform) still does not offer a way to do image retention/deletion.
This resulted in untidy container registries and also unnecessary cost.
Instead of submitting a feature request we created a GitLab CI pipeline which does it all for you! We’ve developed this little GitLab pipeline to ensure our Google container registries only keep the last 10 images. Thus, we’re not needlessly paying for images we’re never going to need to deploy again. Besides the cost factor it is also easier to maintain for its tidiness.
Introducing the GCR Scrubber
GitHub – vnc-biz/gcr-scrubber: A GitLab CI Pipeline which deletes any images older than a defined number of tags from GCR (Google Container Registry).
About VNClagoon
Secure, Best in Class, Seamless Communication and Collaboration, Lowest TCO
The VNClagoon enterprise software suite offers a full range of integrated communication and collaboration products for messaging, real-time conferencing, community building, channels, email, groupware, task and project management, file handling and more for large organizations. Built upon state-of-the-art open source technology by thousands of world-class developers around the world, VNClagoon is a leading alternative to closed source and SaaS-only applications like Microsoft Teams, Zoom, WhatsApp, Dropbox and many others. Now it is possible for VNClagoon customers to gain greater control over their digital sovereignty as they communicate and collaborate more securely using one completely integrated suite of applications. For more information visit:
https://vnclagoon.com
