Client Overview
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
The Challenge
Absci was running a self-hosted GitLab Enterprise Edition (v18.1.1) deployment on AWS EKS — a containerized setup supported by Amazon RDS, ElastiCache, and a VPN for secure remote access. While technically functional, this architecture introduced a growing list of operational overhead:
Infrastructure maintenance: patching, upgrades, and monitoring fell on the internal engineering team.
Scaling complexity: as team and project volume grew, so did the cost and effort of keeping the platform healthy.
VPN dependency: remote access relied on a VPN, introducing a single point of failure for developer access.
Operational overhead: backups, availability management, and incident response consumed engineering time that could be spent on product work.
Large binary assets: four repositories had grown beyond 5GB, requiring Git LFS and S3 backend management.
The organization needed a path to a modern, managed platform — one that would reduce friction, improve availability, and let the team focus on building, not maintaining infrastructure.
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Scaling Friction: The company was accumulating a growing number of technologies and a digital footprint that was becoming increasingly complex to manage.
Strategic Gaps: Beyond just "writing code," the company recognized a need to “level-up” their DevOps strategy to ensure they were positioned to capitalize on future growth.
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
Our Approach
NextLink Labs conducted a thorough discovery engagement to map Absci's GitLab environment before recommending any migration path. This involved auditing the full scope of their deployment:
Discovery & Assessment
Catalogued 481 projects across 34 groups, mapping group hierarchy and project ownership.
Identified 14 project-level deploy tokens and 1 group-level deploy token requiring migration planning.
Documented CI/CD runner infrastructure.
Mapped third-party integrations: Okta SSO, Jira, and Slack.
Flagged four oversized repositories (5GB+) relying on Git LFS.
Noted active use of Container Registry, Package Registry, and Static Pages.
Migration Strategy: Direct Transfer
After evaluating options, NextLink Labs recommended GitLab's direct transfer method over export/import for its speed, data integrity, and reduced complexity at scale.
| Challenge | Solution |
|---|---|
| Large export file management at 481-project scale | Direct transfer eliminates intermediate file creation entirely |
| Risk of data loss or relationship breakage during manual migration | Complete project history, branches, tags, and MR relationships preserved |
| Long developer blackout windows during migration | Minimized downtime through phased, scheduled transfer windows |
| Human error risk across 481 individual project operations | Automated direct transfer with built-in retry and logging |
SSO & Identity Configuration
Absci was already using Okta for authentication on their self-hosted instance. We designed the GitLab.com SSO integration to match their existing identity model:
Configured SAML SSO at the top-level GitLab.com group.
Enabled SCIM provisioning via Okta Lifecycle Management for automated user add/remove.
Ensured NameID configuration matched GitLab's documented requirements.
Maintained temporary local admin accounts during cutover as a fallback.
Integration Reconnection
All third-party integrations were pre-configured and tested in a staging environment before the production cutover, including Jira issue linking, Slack pipeline and merge request notifications, and webhook endpoints for custom tooling.
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Scaling Friction: The company was accumulating a growing number of technologies and a digital footprint that was becoming increasingly complex to manage.
Strategic Gaps: Beyond just "writing code," the company recognized a need to “level-up” their DevOps strategy to ensure they were positioned to capitalize on future growth.
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Scaling Friction: The company was accumulating a growing number of technologies and a digital footprint that was becoming increasingly complex to manage.
Strategic Gaps: Beyond just "writing code," the company recognized a need to “level-up” their DevOps strategy to ensure they were positioned to capitalize on future growth.
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
Results
The migration was completed within the planned maintenance window with zero data loss across all 481 projects — including full merge request history and issues.
Infrastructure Eliminated
Absci's engineering team no longer manages GitLab server infrastructure, database backups, Redis caches, or VPN access for GitLab. GitLab handles availability, upgrades, and security patching — freeing internal resources for product development.
Developer Productivity Restored
With VPN no longer required for GitLab access, developers gained frictionless access from any location. Okta SSO via GitLab.com provides the same secure, centralized authentication they were used to — without the maintenance burden.
Full Feature Parity Maintained
All GitLab EE capabilities — Container Registry, Package Registry, CI/CD pipelines, Jira integration, Slack notifications, and Static Pages — remained fully operational post-migration under a GitLab Premium SaaS license.
Acceptance Criteria Met
All repositories, commit history, branches, tags, and merge requests successfully migrated.
All 157 users authenticated via Okta SSO post-migration.
All CI/CD pipelines executed successfully with equivalent performance benchmarks.
Jira and Slack integrations confirmed operational with data sync verified.
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Scaling Friction: The company was accumulating a growing number of technologies and a digital footprint that was becoming increasingly complex to manage.
Strategic Gaps: Beyond just "writing code," the company recognized a need to “level-up” their DevOps strategy to ensure they were positioned to capitalize on future growth.
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
4-hour deployment windows causing business disruption
Scaling Friction: The company was accumulating a growing number of technologies and a digital footprint that was becoming increasingly complex to manage.
Strategic Gaps: Beyond just "writing code," the company recognized a need to “level-up” their DevOps strategy to ensure they were positioned to capitalize on future growth.
Lack of SOC 2 compliance requirements
High infrastructure costs due to over-provisioning
