GitLab CI/CD in Practice

GitLab CI/CD in Practice

From Fundamentals to Pipelines - 1 day

Learn how to implement and manage CI/CD with GitLab like a seasoned DevOps pro.

Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) are core practices in modern DevOps workflows that help teams deliver high-quality software faster and more reliably. GitLab integrates powerful CI/CD capabilities directly into its DevOps platform, allowing developers and operations teams to automate builds, tests, and deployments in a consistent way.

This 1-day course gives you hands-on, practical knowledge of how CI/CD works in GitLab — from core principles and pipeline basics to runners, jobs, and deployment automation. The content reflects industry-relevant skills used in real projects and taught by an instructor with deep experience in delivering production-ready CI/CD solutions.

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this course you will be able to:

• Explain the foundational concepts of CI/CD and how they apply in GitLab.
• Configure basic GitLab pipelines and understand job stages.
• Use and manage GitLab Runners to execute CI/CD jobs.
• Implement pipeline variables, artifacts, and basic deployment flows.
• Apply best practices for CI/CD pipelines in a collaborative team environment.

Prerequisites

Participants should have:

• Basic Git knowledge (commits, branches, merging).
• Familiarity with GitLab UI and basic project management.
• Comfortable with using a terminal or command line.
• Some experience with DevOps concepts is helpful but not required.

Detailed Course Outline

1. CI/CD Fundamentals

• What is Continuous Integration?
• What is Continuous Deployment/Delivery?
• Benefits of CI/CD in software workflows.

2. Introduction to GitLab CI/CD

• Overview of GitLab’s integrated CI/CD.
• How GitLab organizes pipelines and jobs.

3. GitLab Runners

• What are GitLab Runners and how they work.
• Shared vs. specific runners.
• Registering and managing a runner.

4. Writing Your First Pipeline

• Structure of .gitlab-ci.yml.
• Defining stages and jobs.
• Basic directives and syntax.

5. Pipeline Execution and Job Types

• How jobs are executed in stages.
• Understanding successful vs failed jobs.
• Exploring pipeline visualization.

6. Variables and Artifacts

• Defining CI/CD variables and secrets.
• Passing artifacts between jobs.
• Using caching to speed up pipelines.

7. Basic Deployment Strategies

• Using GitLab for automated deployments.
• Environment targets (staging, production).
• Manual vs automatic job triggers.

8. Pipeline Best Practices

• Naming conventions and structure.
• Minimizing pipeline failures.
• Tips for maintainable CI/CD configuration.

9. Collaborative CI/CD with GitLab

• Integrating merge requests with pipelines.
• Pipeline status checks before merging.
• Review apps and preview deployments.

10. Preparing for Certification (Optional)

• Typical topics tested in GitLab Certified CI/CD Associate exam.
• Practice exercises and hands-on labs suggestions.