Case Studies / Cloud Migration
CI/CD Migration • Cloud Migration
GitLab SaaS Migration
How NextLink Labs helped Absci eliminate self-hosted overhead, simplify their GitLab setup, and accelerate developer productivity through a seamless migration to GitLab.com.
Self-hosted overhead at growing scale
Absci is a biotechnology company developing AI-powered drug creation platforms. With an engineering team spanning multiple disciplines, their internal GitLab environment had become the backbone of all software development operations, from bioinformatics pipelines to product engineering. They were 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.
Key pain points included:
- Infrastructure maintenance — patching, upgrades, and monitoring fell on the internal engineering team
- Scaling complexity, with cost and effort growing alongside team and project volume
- VPN dependency for remote access, introducing a single point of failure for developer access
- Operational overhead from backups, availability management, and incident response
- Four repositories that had grown beyond 5GB, requiring Git LFS and S3 backend management
Direct transfer, at 481-project scale
We conducted a thorough discovery engagement to map Absci's full GitLab environment before recommending GitLab's direct transfer method over export/import, for its speed, data integrity, and reduced complexity at scale.
Discovery & Assessment
Catalogued 481 projects across 34 groups, identified 15 deploy tokens requiring migration planning, documented CI/CD runner infrastructure, mapped Okta, Jira, and Slack integrations, and flagged four oversized repositories relying on Git LFS.
Direct Transfer Migration
Recommended and executed GitLab’s direct transfer method, eliminating intermediate export-file creation, preserving complete project history and merge-request relationships, and minimizing downtime through phased, scheduled transfer windows.
SSO & Identity Configuration
Configured SAML SSO at the top-level GitLab.com group to match Absci's existing Okta identity model, enabled SCIM provisioning for automated user add/remove, and maintained temporary local admin accounts as a cutover fallback.
Integration Reconnection
Pre-configured and tested all third-party integrations — Jira issue linking, Slack pipeline and merge-request notifications, and custom webhook endpoints — in staging before the production cutover.
From full-environment audit to production cutover
Discovery & Assessment
Audited the full scope of the self-hosted deployment: 481 projects, 34 groups, deploy tokens, CI/CD runners, and third-party integrations.
Migration Strategy & SSO Design
Selected the direct transfer method and designed the GitLab.com SSO integration to match Absci's existing Okta identity model.
Staging Validation
Pre-configured and tested every third-party integration in a staging environment ahead of cutover.
Production Migration & Cutover
Completed the migration within the planned maintenance window with zero data loss across all 481 projects.
Zero data loss, zero infrastructure to manage
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
- No more GitLab server infrastructure, database backups, or Redis caches to manage
- VPN access for GitLab eliminated entirely
- GitLab now handles availability, upgrades, and security patching
Feature Parity Maintained
- Container Registry, Package Registry, CI/CD pipelines, Jira, Slack, and Static Pages all fully operational
- All 157 users authenticated via Okta SSO post-migration
- All CI/CD pipelines executed successfully with equivalent performance
With VPN no longer required for GitLab access, developers gained frictionless access from any location, while Okta SSO via GitLab.com preserved the same secure, centralized authentication they were used to — without the maintenance burden.
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