Automating GitLab backups to an AWS S3 bucket using scheduled tasks

Automating GitLab Backups to AWS S3

To automate GitLab backups to an AWS S3 bucket using scheduled tasks, you need to perform several tasks:

Create an S3 Bucket for storing GitLab backups.
Set up the necessary IAM roles and policies that grant the required permissions for access and backup operations.
Configure GitLab for periodic backups.
Implement a scheduling mechanism (such as an AWS Lambda function, or AWS EC2 instance with cron jobs) to perform the backup periodically and upload it to the S3 bucket.

In this Pulumi program, I'll demonstrate how to create the necessary AWS infrastructure with Pulumi using TypeScript. The program will create an S3 bucket to store the backups, configure the bucket for security, and set up an IAM role for access controls. Please note that setting up the GitLab configuration for backups and the actual scheduling of backup operations will typically be done within GitLab or your orchestration tooling rather than directly within Pulumi.

The following Pulumi program performs the following actions:

Creates an AWS S3 bucket where we will store our backups.
Applies a public access block to the bucket to ensure our backups remain private.
Creates an IAM role which will be assumed by the entity performing the backup operation. This IAM role will have the permissions to put objects into the S3 bucket.

Here's the Pulumi program written in TypeScript:

import * as pulumi from '@pulumi/pulumi';
import * as aws from '@pulumi/aws';

// Create an AWS S3 bucket
const backupBucket = new aws.s3.Bucket('gitlab-backup-bucket', {
    // Optionally add more configurations such as versioning, logging, etc.
});

// Block public access to the S3 bucket
const bucketPublicAccessBlock = new aws.s3.BucketPublicAccessBlock('gitlab-backup-bucket-public-access-block', {
    bucket: backupBucket.id,
    blockPublicAcls: true,
    blockPublicPolicy: true,
    ignorePublicAcls: true,
    restrictPublicBuckets: true,
});

// Create an IAM role which will be assumed by the entity performing the backup operations
const backupRole = new aws.iam.Role('gitlab-backup-role', {
    assumeRolePolicy: {
        Version: "2012-10-17",
        Statement: [{
            Action: 'sts:AssumeRole',
            Effect: 'Allow',
            Principal: {
                Service: 'ec2.amazonaws.com', // or 'lambda.amazonaws.com' for a Lambda function
            },
        }],
    },
});

// Attach a policy to the IAM role to allow it to put objects into the S3 bucket
const backupRolePolicy = new aws.iam.RolePolicy('gitlab-backup-role-policy', {
    role: backupRole.id,
    policy: pulumi.output(backupBucket.arn).apply(arn => ({
        Version: "2012-10-17",
        Statement: [{
            Action: [
                's3:PutObject',
                's3:ListBucket',
            ],
            Effect: 'Allow',
            Resource: [arn, `${arn}/*`], // Bucket arn and objects within bucket
        }],
    })),
});

// Export the name of the bucket
export const backupBucketName = backupBucket.id;

To explain the program:

An S3 bucket is created to store the GitLab backups.
Public access to the bucket is blocked completely, ensuring the stored data is not publicly accessible.
An IAM role is defined with a trust policy to allow an EC2 instance or Lambda service to assume this role.
A role policy is created and attached to the role, granting permissions to work with the S3 bucket.

The scheduling portion of the backup (how often you backup, and triggering the action) depends on your environment and requirements. You could use an AWS Lambda function triggered by Amazon CloudWatch Events at scheduled intervals or set a cron job on an EC2 instance to run the backup script and upload to S3.

Please be aware that additional configuration is necessary within GitLab itself to enable and configure backups. You can schedule this task with a cron job (if GitLab is hosted on a server that you manage) or by other solutions offered by GitLab on your hosting solution.