GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions is a powerful and flexible automation platform provided by GitHub. It allows developers to automate various tasks, directly within the GitHub repository, such as

• building
• testing
• deployment

By default GitHub Actions runners (the machine where the above-mentioned tasks run) runs on GitHub’s Infrastructure, but you can run it on your infrastructure too.

Cirun.io

Cirun.io is a service to run GitHub Actions on your cloud (or on-prem), launched in March 2021:

But why?

• Fast and performant runners
• Cost efficient
• Custom Machines
• GPU Runners

How?

By changing one line in your GitHub Workflow (e.g. .github/workflows/<workflow-name>.yml)

runs-on: "cirun-aws-t2-large-ubuntu2204"

or alternatively, for advance configuration, by creating a .cirun.yml file in the root directory of your repository:

# Self-Hosted Github Action Runners on AWS via Cirun.io
# Reference: https://docs.cirun.io/reference/yaml
runners:
  - name: "aws-runner"
    # Cloud Provider: AWS
    cloud: "aws"
    # Instance type on AWS
    instance_type: "t2.medium"
    # Ubuntu-20.4, ami image
    machine_image: "ami-06fd8a495a537da8b"
    preemptible: false
    # Add this label in the "runs-on" param in .github/workflows/<workflow-name>.yml
    # So that this runner is created for running the workflow
    labels:
      - "cirun-aws-runner"

The above configuration will create a t2.medium EC2 instance on your AWS with AMI ID mentioned in the machine_image key, whenever a GitHub Actions job is created, which has runs-on: cirun-aws-runner .

Where?

Cirun is supported on six cloud providers, YES you read that right, 6!

• AWS
• GCP
• Azure
• DigitalOcean
• OpenStack
• Oracle

Create On-demand self-hosted Github Actions runners on your cloud, some useful links:

• cirun.io
• docs.cirun.io
• blog.cirun.io
• twitter.com/CirunHQ