[GHC DevOps Group] CircleCI status

[Greg Steuck (Sh-toy-k)]

Hi Ben,

We are only using ~$400/month in GHC VM donation GCE project (Windows
license claiming the lions share). If you need more compute, there's plenty
of headroom left.

Thanks
Greg

On Wed, Dec 12, 2018 at 3:21 PM Ben Gamari <ben at well-typed.com> wrote:

> TL;DR. CircleCI's free tier will no longer include the large instances
>        used by GHC CI starting next week.
>
>
> Hello everyone,
>
> Prompted by a rather surprisingly short-notice email from CircleCI I
> just got off of the phone with them to discuss a change in their pricing
> model. This new model, which they will be instituting later this week,
> will users of medium+ and larger instances will no longer be covered
> by the free tier of service which we currently use.
>
> Currently we are using CircleCI for only a fraction of what we would
> like to validate:
>
>  * commit validation (which we have been checking manually while we
>    transition to GitLab) in a handful of configuration
>  * nightly intensive validation
>  * release binary distributions (but don't yet produce all distributions
> via CI)
>
> Ultimately we would like to also introduce merge request validation, which
> will add a large volume of builds once implemented later this month.
>
> However, even our current usage totals to around 2.5 million CircleCI
> credits. Up to this point we have been covered by CircleCI's free tier
> service. However, under the new pricing model the extra-large instances
> which we use are no longer covered in the free tier.
>
> Note that medium instances are still covered by the free tier service.
> However, the GHC build on such an instance does not fit within
> CircleCI's five hour build-time limit.
>
> It seems we have a few options:
>
>  a. Pay for our credits. The 2.5 million credits we used last month
>     would cost approximately 2,400 USD/month. I asked CircleCI last
>     summer and when I was on the phone with them today and they will not
>     offer us a reduced price.
>
>  b. Find another solution. Thankfully, the move to GitLab has freed us
>     from any particular CI provider.
>
> Happily, our CI setup is nearly fully Dockerised at this point, so
> moving is quite straightforward. With the move to GitLab, we have no
> need for the provisioning and queue management functionality that
> CircleCI provides.
>
> Finally, I find the 2,400 USD/month number to be extremely high given
> the service we are getting. By comparison:
>
>  * The machine sitting next to my desk cost ~$2,500, a couple hundred
>    USD/year in electricity and yet finishes six builds in the time it
>    takes a CircleCI XL instance to finish one.
>
>  * A machine comparable to mine from Packet.net is only 700 USD/month
>
>  * A EC2 instance comparable to the CircleCI XL would only amount to a
>    few hundred USD/month.
>
>  * A dedicated Hetzner box comparable to the XL is ~40 EUR/month
>
> In my opinion, any of these solutions would be a better use of our
> limited resources.
>
> Regardless, I have convinced CircleCI to extend us a one-week trial
> period allowing us a bit of breathing room. If necessary we can pay for
> CircleCI on a month-by-month basis if we need additional time.
>
> - Ben
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