Terraform module Self-Hosted Scalable GitHub Actions runners on AWS.

📄 Extensive documentation is available via our GitHub Pages Docs site.

📢 We maintain the project as a truly open-source project on a best effort basis. We welcome contributions from the community. Feel free to help us answering issues, reviewing PRs, or maintaining and improving the project.

This Terraform module creates the required infrastructure needed to host GitHub Actions self-hosted, auto-scaling runners on AWS spot instances. It provides the required logic to handle the lifecycle for scaling up and down using a set of AWS Lambda functions. Runners are scaled down to zero to avoid costs when no workflows are active.

Features

• Scaling: Scale up and down based on GitHub events
• Sustainability: Scale down to zero when no jobs are running
• Security: Runners are created on-demand and terminated after use (ephemeral runners)
• Cost optimization: Runners are created on spot instances
• Tailored software, hardware and network configuration: Bring your own AMI, define the instance types and subnets to use.
• OS support: Linux (x64/arm64) and Windows
• Multi-Runner: Create multiple runner configurations with a single deployment
• GitHub cloud, GitHub Cloud with Data Residency and GitHub Enterprise Server (GHES) support.
• Org and repo level runners. enterprise level runners are not supported (yet).

Getting started

Check out the detailed instructions in the Getting Started section of the docs. On a high level, the following steps are required to get started: - Setup your AWS account - Create and configure a GitHub App - Download or build the required lambdas - Deploy the module using Terraform - Install the GitHub App to your organization or repositories and add your repositories to the runner group(s).

Check out the provided Terraform examples in the examples directory for different scenarios.

Configuration

Please check the configuration section of the docs for major configuration options. See the Terraform module documentation for all available options.

Acknowledgements

This repository was originally founded and maintained by Philips Labs. We gratefully acknowledge their initial contributions and stewardship of this project. You can find the original repository here: https://github.com/philips-labs/terraform-aws-github-runner

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE file for details.

Contributing

We welcome contributions, please check out the contribution guide. Be aware we use pre commit hooks to update the docs.

Join the community

Join our discord community via this invite link.

Terraform root module documentation

Requirements

Name	Version
terraform	>= 1.3.0
aws	>= 6.33
random	~> 3.0

Providers

Name	Version
aws	>= 6.33
random	~> 3.0

Modules

Name	Source	Version
ami_housekeeper	./modules/ami-housekeeper	n/a
instance_termination_watcher	./modules/termination-watcher	n/a
runner_binaries	./modules/runner-binaries-syncer	n/a
runners	./modules/runners	n/a
ssm	./modules/ssm	n/a
webhook	./modules/webhook	n/a

Resources

Name	Type
aws_sqs_queue.queued_builds	resource
aws_sqs_queue.queued_builds_dlq	resource
aws_sqs_queue_policy.build_queue_dlq_policy	resource
aws_sqs_queue_policy.build_queue_policy	resource
random_string.random	resource
aws_iam_policy_document.deny_insecure_transport	data source

Inputs

Name	Description	Type	Default	Required
ami	AMI configuration for the action runner instances. This object allows you to specify all AMI-related settings in one place.

Parameters:

• filter: Map of lists to filter AMIs by various criteria (e.g., { name = ["ubuntu/images/hvm-ssd/ubuntu-jammy-22.04-amd64-*"], state = ["available"] })

• owners: List of AMI owners to limit the search. Common values: ["amazon"], ["self"], or specific AWS account IDs

• id_ssm_parameter_arn: ARN of an SSM parameter containing the AMI ID. If specified, this overrides both AMI filter and parameter name

• kms_key_arn: Optional KMS key ARN if the AMI is encrypted with a customer managed key

Defaults to null, in which case the module falls back to individual AMI variables (deprecated). |

object({

filter               = optional(map(list(string)), { state = ["available"] })

owners               = optional(list(string), ["amazon"])

id_ssm_parameter_arn = optional(string, null)

kms_key_arn          = optional(string, null)

})

| null | no | | ami_housekeeper_cleanup_config | Configuration for AMI cleanup.

`amiFilters` - Filters to use when searching for AMIs to cleanup. Default filter for images owned by the account and that are available.

`dryRun` - If true, no AMIs will be deregistered. Default false.

`launchTemplateNames` - Launch template names to use when searching for AMIs to cleanup. Default no launch templates.

`maxItems` - The maximum number of AMIs that will be queried for cleanup. Default no maximum.

`minimumDaysOld` - Minimum number of days old an AMI must be to be considered for cleanup. Default 30.

`ssmParameterNames` - SSM parameter names to use when searching for AMIs to cleanup. This parameter should be set when using SSM to configure the AMI to use. Default no SSM parameters. | <pre>object({

amiFilters = optional(list(object({

  Name   = string

  Values = list(string)

  })),

  [{

    Name : "state",

    Values : ["available"],

    },

    {

      Name : "image-type",

      Values : ["machine"],

  }]

)

dryRun              = optional(bool, false)

launchTemplateNames = optional(list(string))

maxItems            = optional(number)

minimumDaysOld      = optional(number, 30)

ssmParameterNames   = optional(list(string))

}) | {} | no | | ami_housekeeper_lambda_s3_key | S3 key for syncer lambda function. Required if using S3 bucket to specify lambdas. | string | null | no | | ami_housekeeper_lambda_s3_object_version | S3 object version for syncer lambda function. Useful if S3 versioning is enabled on source bucket. | string | null | no | | ami_housekeeper_lambda_schedule_expression | Scheduler expression for action runner binary syncer. | string | "rate(1 day)" | no | | ami_housekeeper_lambda_timeout | Time out of the lambda in seconds. | number | 300 | no | | ami_housekeeper_lambda_zip | File location of the lambda zip file. | string | null | no | | associate_public_ipv4_address | Associate public IPv4 with the runner. Only tested with IPv4 | bool | false | no | | aws_partition | (optiona) partition in the arn namespace to use if not 'aws' | string | "aws" | no | | aws_region | AWS region. | string | n/a | yes | | block_device_mappings | The EC2 instance block device configuration. Takes the following keys: device_name, delete_on_termination, volume_type, volume_size, encrypted, iops, throughput, kms_key_id, snapshot_id, volume_initialization_rate. |

list(object({

delete_on_termination      = optional(bool, true)

device_name                = optional(string, "/dev/xvda")

encrypted                  = optional(bool, true)

iops                       = optional(number)

kms_key_id                 = optional(string)

snapshot_id                = optional(string)

throughput                 = optional(number)

volume_initialization_rate = optional(number)

volume_size                = number

volume_type                = optional(string, "gp3")

}))

|

[

{
"volume_size": 30

}
]

| no | | cloudwatch_config | (optional) Replaces the module's default cloudwatch log config. See https://docs.aws.amazon.com/AmazonCloudWatch/latest/monitoring/CloudWatch-Agent-Configuration-File-Details.html for details. | string | null | no | | create_service_linked_role_spot | (optional) create the service linked role for spot instances that is required by the scale-up lambda. | bool | false | no | | delay_webhook_event | The number of seconds the event accepted by the webhook is invisible on the queue before the scale up lambda will receive the event. | number | 30 | no | | disable_runner_autoupdate | Disable the auto update of the github runner agent. Be aware there is a grace period of 30 days, see also the GitHub article | bool | false | no | | ec2_dynamic_labels_policy | Experimental! Can be removed / changed without trigger a major release.

Optional policy for dynamic EC2 override labels evaluated by the webhook

dispatcher. Only effective when enable_dynamic_labels = true.

Jo