Configure GitLab using an external PostgreSQL service

If you're hosting GitLab on a cloud provider, you can optionally use a managed service for PostgreSQL. For example, AWS offers a managed Relational Database Service (RDS) that runs PostgreSQL.

Alternatively, you may opt to manage your own PostgreSQL instance or cluster separate from the Omnibus GitLab package.

If you use a cloud-managed service, or provide your own PostgreSQL instance:

  1. Set up PostgreSQL according to the database requirements document.

  2. Set up a gitlab username with a password of your choice. The gitlab user needs privileges to create the gitlabhq_production database.

  3. If you are using a cloud-managed service, you may need to grant additional roles to your gitlab user:

  4. Configure the GitLab application servers with the appropriate connection details for your external PostgreSQL service in your /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb file:

    # Disable the bundled Omnibus provided PostgreSQL
    postgresql['enable'] = false
    
    # PostgreSQL connection details
    gitlab_rails['db_adapter'] = 'postgresql'
    gitlab_rails['db_encoding'] = 'unicode'
    gitlab_rails['db_host'] = '10.1.0.5' # IP/hostname of database server
    gitlab_rails['db_password'] = 'DB password'

    For more information on GitLab HA setups, refer to configuring GitLab for HA.

  5. Reconfigure for the changes to take effect:

    sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure