Fastest provider

[automartin5000]

I started using CodeBuild as the provider as it seemed like the simplest solution given that its serverless. But it seems like provisioning times are at least 1 minute, presumably to pull the docker image. Is there a way to speed that up?

So I tried EC2 spot, figuring that'd be cheap and always available, but it seems as though it doesn't leave the instances running and spins up a new instance for every job. Is there a way to leave n number of instances running at a max price?

All this is to say: what's the fastest provider?

[kichik]

Lambda is the fastest provider but it is very limited by having a read-only file system, short time limit, and only 10GB of space. CodeBuild can be sped up by using bigger instances. EC2 might be faster still.

None of the options leave the runners behind because we aim to spin up ephemeral runners. Persistent runners can cause weird build issues as anything installed in one build will be available in the next.

It sounds like you're looking for #191.

[automartin5000]

I’m still seeing one minute initialization times with Lambda (presumably to pull the image). It seems like every option has about a 1 minute start to pull the image. Even more reason for #191

[kichik]

0.9.1 now has support for EcsRunnerProvider and you can use something like:

new GitHubRunners(stack, 'runners', {
  providers: [
    new EcsRunnerProvider(stack, 'ECS', {
      minInstances: 1,
  ],
});

Even with the default minInstances: 0, the instances stay behind for 15 minutes. You have access to the ASG with new EcsRunnerProvider(this, 'ECS').capacityProvider.autoScalingGroup so you should be able to even add scheduled scaling or anything else you might need. And if you want even more control, you can override the capacity provider completely.

[automartin5000]

Awesome thanks! Can’t wait to try it 💪

[sercantor]

@kichik if I use ECS Runners, and set the minInstances: 0 will the runners still be ephemeral?

[kichik]

@kichik if I use ECS Runners, and set the minInstances: 0 will the runners still be ephemeral?

Yes. The Docker containers running the runner are never reused.

[sercantor]

Thanks a lot for answering, I didn't know the inner workings 🙏