GitLab CE on k3s with S3 backup arrows GitLab CE on k3s with S3 backup arrows

Migrating from GitHub to self-hosted GitLab CE — and rebuilding it from S3

TL;DR I moved every private homelab repo off GitHub onto a self-hosted GitLab CE 18.10 instance running on my k3s cluster. GitHub stays as a read-only mirror plus the break-glass k3s_bootstrap repo. Two weeks later I accidentally blkdiscard’d the GitLab volume and rebuilt the entire instance from an S3 backup. It worked, but the boring parts — runner re-registration, group tokens, container-registry pull secrets — were the real cost. Why bother GitHub was fine. GitHub Actions was fine. The thing that pushed me over was billing math plus blast radius: ...

April 29, 2026 · 5 min · zolty

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