Article version: Enterprise Server 2.14

This version of GitHub Enterprise will be discontinued on This version of GitHub Enterprise was discontinued on 2019-07-12. No patch releases will be made, even for critical security issues. For better performance, improved security, and new features, upgrade to the latest version of GitHub Enterprise. For help with the upgrade, contact GitHub Enterprise support.

Increasing CPU or memory resources

To add CPU or memory resources to an existing GitHub Enterprise Server instance, shut down the instance and use the underlying virtual platform's tools to allocate the resources to the virtual machine. The newly allocated resources are automatically recognized on boot and no additional configuration is necessary.

Warning: The process for allocating new system resources varies by virtualization platform and resource type. You should always configure the monitoring and alerting of key system resources. For more information, see "Monitoring your GitHub Enterprise Server appliance."

In this guide

Adding CPU or memory resources for AWS

Note: To add CPU or memory resources for AWS, you must be familiar with using either the AWS management console or the aws ec2 command line interface to manage EC2 instances. For background and details on using the AWS tools of your choice to perform the resize, see the AWS documentation on resizing an Amazon EBS-backed instance.

Resizing considerations

Before increasing CPU or memory resources for your GitHub Enterprise Server instance:

Supported AWS instance types

You need to determine the instance type you would like to upgrade to based on CPU/memory specifications. GitHub Enterprise Server is supported on the following EC2 instance types. For more information, see the AWS EC2 instance type overview page.

EC2 instance type Model
C3 c3.2xlarge, c3.4xlarge, c3.8xlarge
EC2 instance type Model
C4 c4.2xlarge, c4.4xlarge, c4.8xlarge
EC2 instance type Model
M3 m3.xlarge, m3.2xlarge
EC2 instance type Model
M4 m4.xlarge, m4.2xlarge, m4.4xlarge, m4.10xlarge, m4.16xlarge
EC2 instance type Model
R4 r4.large, r4.xlarge, r4.2xlarge, r4.4xlarge, r4.8xlarge, r4.16xlarge
EC2 instance type Model
X1 x1.16xlarge, x1.32xlarge

Based on your seat count, we recommend the following instance types.

Seats Recommended type
10 - 500 r4.large
500 - 3000 r4.xlarge
3000 - 5000 r4.2xlarge
5000 - 8000 r4.4xlarge
8000 - 10000+ r4.8xlarge

Note: You can always scale up your CPU or memory by resizing your instance. However, because resizing your CPU or memory requires downtime for your users, we recommend over-provisioning resources to account for scale.

Resizing for AWS

Note: For instances launched in EC2-Classic, write down both the Elastic IP address associated with the instance and the instance's ID. Once you restart the instance, re-associate the Elastic IP address.

It's not possible to add CPU or memory resources to an existing AWS/EC2 instance. Instead, you must:

  1. Stop the instance.
  2. Change the instance type.
  3. Start the instance.
  4. Once the instance has fully restarted and you can reach it, use the SSH administrative shell to verify that the new resource configuration is recognized:

    $ ssh -p 122 admin@HOSTNAME
    $ ghe-system-info

Adding CPU or memory resources for OpenStack KVM

It's not possible to add CPU or memory resources to an existing OpenStack KVM instance. Instead, you must:

  1. Take a snapshot of the current instance.
  2. Stop the instance.
  3. Select a new instance flavor that has the desired CPU and/or memory resources.

Adding CPU or memory resources for VMWare

If operations on your GitHub Enterprise Server instance are slow, you may need to add CPU or memory resources.

  1. Use the vSphere Client to connect to the VMware ESXi host.
  2. Shut down your GitHub Enterprise Server instance.
  3. Select the virtual machine and click Edit Settings.
  4. Under "Hardware", adjust the CPU and/or memory resources allocated to the virtual machine as needed:
    VMware setup resources
  5. To start the virtual machine, click OK.
  6. Once the instance has fully restarted and you can reach it, use the SSH administrative shell to verify that the new resource configuration is recognized:

    $ ssh -p 122 admin@HOSTNAME
    $ ghe-system-info

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