Processing specific job classes

WARNING: These are advanced settings. While they are used on GitLab.com, most GitLab instances should only add more processes that listen to all queues. This is the same approach described in the Reference Architectures.

Most GitLab instances should have all processes to listen to all queues.

Another alternative is to use routing rules which direct specific job classes inside the application to queue names that you configure. Then, the Sidekiq processes only need to listen to a handful of the configured queues. Doing so lowers the load on Redis, which is important on very large-scale deployments.

Routing rules

Default routing rule value introduced in GitLab 15.4.

Queue selectors replaced by routing rules in GitLab 17.0.

NOTE: Mailer jobs cannot be routed by routing rules, and always go to the mailers queue. When using routing rules, ensure that at least one process is listening to the mailers queue. Typically this can be placed alongside the default queue.

We recommend most GitLab instances using routing rules to manage their Sidekiq queues. This allows administrators to choose single queue names for groups of job classes based on their attributes. The syntax is an ordered array of pairs of [query, queue]:

The query is a worker matching query.
The queue name must be a valid Sidekiq queue name. If the queue name is nil, or an empty string, the worker is routed to the queue generated by the name of the worker instead. (See list of available job classes for more information). The queue name does not have to match any existing queue name in the list of available job classes.
The first query matching a worker is chosen for that worker; later rules are ignored.

Routing rules migration

After the Sidekiq routing rules are changed, you must take care with the migration to avoid losing jobs entirely, especially in a system with long queues of jobs. The migration can be done by following the migration steps mentioned in Sidekiq job migration.

Routing rules in a scaled architecture

Routing rules must be the same across all GitLab nodes (especially GitLab Rails and Sidekiq nodes) as they are part of the application configuration.

Detailed example

This is a comprehensive example intended to show different possibilities. A Helm chart example is also available. These are not recommendations.

Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

sidekiq['routing_rules'] = [
  # Route all non-CPU-bound workers that are high urgency to `high-urgency` queue
  ['resource_boundary!=cpu&urgency=high', 'high-urgency'],
  # Route all database, gitaly and global search workers that are throttled to `throttled` queue
  ['feature_category=database,gitaly,global_search&urgency=throttled', 'throttled'],
  # Route all workers having contact with outside world to a `network-intenstive` queue
  ['has_external_dependencies=true|feature_category=hooks|tags=network', 'network-intensive'],
  # Wildcard matching, route the rest to `default` queue
  ['*', 'default']
]

The queue_groups can then be set to match these generated queue names. For instance:

sidekiq['queue_groups'] = [
  # Run two high-urgency processes
  'high-urgency',
  'high-urgency',
  # Run one process for throttled, network-intensive
  'throttled,network-intensive',
  # Run one 'catchall' process on the default and mailers queues
  'default,mailers'
]

Save the file and reconfigure GitLab:
```
sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
```

Worker matching query

GitLab provides a query syntax to match a worker based on its attributes employed by routing rules. A query includes two components:

Attributes that can be selected.
Operators used to construct a query.

Available attributes

Queue matching query works upon the worker attributes, described in Sidekiq style guide. We support querying based on a subset of worker attributes:

feature_category - the GitLab feature category the queue belongs to. For example, the merge queue belongs to the source_code_management category.
has_external_dependencies - whether or not the queue connects to external services. For example, all importers have this set to true.
urgency - how important it is that this queue's jobs run quickly. Can be high, low, or throttled. For example, the authorized_projects queue is used to refresh user permissions, and is high urgency.
worker_name - the worker name. Use this attribute to select a specific worker. Find all available names in the job classes lists below.
name - the queue name generated from the worker name. Use this attribute to select a specific queue. Because this is generated from the worker name, it does not change based on the result of other routing rules.
resource_boundary - if the queue is bound by cpu, memory, or unknown. For example, the ProjectExportWorker is memory bound as it has to load data in memory before saving it for export.
tags - short-lived annotations for queues. These are expected to frequently change from release to release, and may be removed entirely.

has_external_dependencies is a boolean attribute: only the exact string true is considered true, and everything else is considered false.

tags is a set, which means that = checks for intersecting sets, and != checks for disjoint sets. For example, tags=a,b selects queues that have tags a, b, or both. tags!=a,b selects queues that have neither of those tags.

Available operators

Routing rules support the following operators, listed from highest to lowest precedence:

| - the logical OR operator. For example, query_a|query_b (where query_a and query_b are queries made up of the other operators here) includes queues that match either query.
& - the logical AND operator. For example, query_a&query_b (where query_a and query_b are queries made up of the other operators here) include only queues that match both queries.
!= - the NOT IN operator. For example, feature_category!=issue_tracking excludes all queues from the issue_tracking feature category.
= - the IN operator. For example, resource_boundary=cpu includes all queues that are CPU bound.
, - the concatenate set operator. For example, feature_category=continuous_integration,pages includes all queues from either the continuous_integration category or the pages category. This example is also possible using the OR operator, but allows greater brevity, as well as being lower precedence.

The operator precedence for this syntax is fixed: it's not possible to make AND have higher precedence than OR.

As with the standard queue group syntax above, a single * as the entire queue group selects all queues.

List of available job classes

For a list of the existing Sidekiq job classes and queues, check the following files: