Client case: Aerorozvidka

From challenges to solutions: How Aerorozvidka increased code security and efficiency with GitLab Premium & Cloudfresh

About the client: NGO Aerorozvidka is an association of experts that advocates and implements systemic changes, innovations and NATO standards in the Security and Defense Forces of Ukraine.

Aerorozvidka is an association of volunteers founded in 2014. The community used commercial drones for intelligence and reconnaissance in the ATO (Anti-Terrorist Operation Zone) zone.

Today, Aerorozvidka develops and implements network-centric and robotic capabilities for the security and defense forces of Ukraine in four areas:

1. C2IS
2. Robotic technologies
3. ISTAR
4. Knowledge management

Project start date: July 2023.
Project end date: cooperation is ongoing

Challenges: In search of a self-hosted solution to minimize the threat of cyberattacks and improve code security, Aerorozvidka started working with the Premium version of GitLab for a trial period. After 6-months, the company needed to purchase licenses, but with a customized contract. An important aspect was resolving all contractual issues quickly so that the company’s work would not be disrupted by blocking Premium features, which could create risks for critical tasks.

Solutions: The Cloudfresh team promptly helped Aerorozvidka renew its Premium package at a special price, restoring access to critical features such as advanced CI/CD capabilities and Agile development for better planning and collaboration between teams.
The main benefits of GitLab Premium licenses are:

Advanced CI/CD that allows you to create, maintain, deploy, and monitor complex application pipelines for rapid code release with minimal intervention. Key features:

• Instance file templates: You can define custom LICENSE, .gitignore, Dockerfile, and .gitlab-ci.yml templates for your GitLab instance to simplify consistency.
• Operations dashboard: You have the ability to visualize the history and current status of pipelines across projects and groups in a single dashboard that can be customized for each user.
• CI/CD for an external repository: Provides the ability to connect your projects hosted on external services (e.g., GitHub or Bitbucket) and use the power of GitLab’s CI/CD pipelines to easily build, test, and deploy your applications.
• Detailed access control for Kubernetes-based CI/CD deployments: Ability to restrict GitLab CI/CD deployment tasks using Kubernetes RBAC.

Self-managed reliability, which provides disaster recovery, high availability, and load balancing of your self-managed deployment. Key features:

• Log forwarding: The ability to send your logs to a centralized system.
• Disaster recovery in minutes in another data center.
• Distributed cloning with GitLab Geo: Built for distributed teams, GitLab Geo helps reduce the time it takes to clone and upload large repositories, thereby speeding up work for all users regardless of their location.

Release control ensures that teams produce high-quality, secure code with the help of:

• Setting the required merge request approvals: You can ensure the quality and standards of your code by requiring the necessary approvals and predefining a list of people who will approve merges.
• Push rules: Reject new code and committees that don’t comply with company policy.
• Blocking project membership for a group: Group owners can prohibit new projects from joining existing ones in the group.
• DNS with geolocation support: Using this feature, users can be redirected to the nearest available server and access storage data faster.
• Protected environments: The ability to specify a person, group, or account that is allowed to deploy in a specific environment, allowing further protection and security of sensitive environments.
• Merge request dependency: Coordinating the order in which merge requests are merged within the same project and/or between different projects.

Cloudfresh also prepared a custom tri-party agreement to meet the requirements of the funder, who agreed to purchase GitLab for Aerozvidka . Thanks to this, the organization was able to maintain the pace of work at a critical time without the need to search and switch to another platform.

Results: By activating GitLab Premium licenses through Cloudfresh, Aerorozvidka ensured high security and quality standards of its code using advanced CI/CD capabilities, and ensured its faster release with minimal delays and team interventions. By automating the code review process, the team was able to free up time for more important tasks.

Cloudfresh role: Cloudfresh quickly responded and helped to resolve Aerorozvidka’s custom request by taking over communication with the GitLab team. Through effective negotiation, Cloudfresh provided a significant discount on licenses and met the individual requirements for signing a contract and payment.