GitLab Enterprise Edition provides a shared platform for storing source code, reviewing changes and running development workflows, with additional capabilities determined by the license tier. It is useful when an organization needs those workflows alongside its particular administration and access requirements. Choosing the EE image does not automatically enable every enterprise feature. Before deployment, match the actual required workflows to both the license and the infrastructure that will operate them.
Deployment and operating notes
The recovered EE page contains copied Community Edition installation text and a dated user-count description. Current GitLab Helm documentation applies to self-managed offerings across license tiers and describes a cloud-native architecture with external stateful dependencies. Selecting the EE image does not by itself establish entitlement to every feature named in the historical article.
Inventory licensed features, authentication providers, audit requirements, Geo or other replication, repositories, artifacts and application secrets before a migration. Follow the documented path for the exact source installation and required version stops, with a tested backup and restore. Compare storage, registry, SSH endpoint and background-job behavior after moving from an Omnibus-style deployment. Validate enterprise-specific workflows with representative users, including denied access and group synchronization, rather than checking only the home page. Keep the license and encryption material recoverable outside the cluster. A rollback requires data reconciliation and compatible restore artifacts; a previous Helm revision does not reverse GitLab database migrations or recover newly accepted pushes.
Historical upstream link check · 2026-10-09
The recorded upstream address responded successfully (HTTP 200) on 2026-10-09. Link availability does not certify the historical installation instructions or current security support.
Website availability is separate from project, chart and image support. Use the current guidance and primary sources on this page to assess the distribution.
Historical Kubedex content
Preserved for context. Commands, versions, prices and results below reflect the original research.
GitLab Enterprise Edition is an application to code, test, and deploy code together. It provides Git repository management with fine-grained access controls, code reviews, issue tracking, activity feeds, wikis, and continuous integration.
GitLab Enterprise Edition builds on top of the Community Edition and includes extra features mainly aimed at organizations with more than 100 users. It includes LDAP group sync, audit logs, and multiple roles. It also includes deeper authentication and authorization integration, fine-grained
workflow management, extra server management options, and integrates with your tool stack.
Introduction
This chart stands up a GitLab Community Edition install. This includes:
- A GitLab Omnibus Pod
- Redis
- Postgresql
Prerequisites
- At least 3 GB of RAM available on your cluster, in chunks of 1 GB
- Kubernetes 1.4+ with Beta APIs enabled
- PV provisioner support in the underlying infrastructure
- The ability to point a DNS entry or URL at your GitLab install
If you’re interested in using GitLab, we recommend you download and install GitLab Enterprise Edition, even if you’re not sure whether you will ever subscribe for a license for GitLab Enterprise Edition. You will still be able to make use of all features of GitLab Community Edition without a need for a license or registering.
License model
GitLab is built on an open core model. That means there are two versions of GitLab: Community Edition and Enterprise Edition.
GitLab Community Edition is open source, with an MIT Expat license. GitLab Enterprise Edition is built on top of Community Edition: it uses the same core but adds additional features and functionality on top of that. This is under a proprietary license.
For both versions: All javascript code in GitLab is open source. All javascript code written by GitLab is under the same MIT license.
Why use Enterprise Edition
To be able to use GitLab Enterprise Edition features, you need a subscription which will give you a license. If you’re using Enterprise Edition without a license, you are only using functions that are MIT licensed.
This means that if you have installed GitLab Enterprise Edition without a license, you will not notice a difference with a typical Community Edition instance, but you have additional advantages:
If at any point in time you’d like to trial Enterprise Edition features, you can do this without the need of setting up a new instance or upgrading your existing instance. You simply enable the trial from within GitLab. If you’re not satisfied with the Enterprise Edition features, your instance will automatically revert back to only Community Edition features after the trial has expired.
To upgrade from Community Edition to Enterprise Edition you will have to make sure you’re on the same version and follow specific steps, which often require downtime. Using Enterprise Edition, changing between only Community Edition features and the full suite of Enterprise Edition features is a matter of a single click.
Why use Community Edition
If you only want to download open source software Community Edition is the best choice. This distribution does not contain proprietary code. Functionally it will behave the same as Enterprise Edition without a license.
Note that in the future if you decide to move to Enterprise Edition, an upgrade is required and may require downtime.
Sources & further reading
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