Actions: Hosted runner & network configuration APIs - [GA] 🔖

[samus-aran]

We are thrilled to announce the general availability of the Actions larger runner REST APIs.

These new APIs empower developers to programmatically create larger runners, assign them to a runner group, configure network settings for Azure private networking, and apply these configurations to specific runner groups.

The new APIs allow developers to create and manage runners at scale without using the GitHub interface, saving time and reducing manual effort. Additionally, the APIs offer flexibility to apply network configurations to specific runner groups for Azure private networking, ensuring the desired configurations are available to development teams.

For more information, please refer to the Actions API documentation and look for the new larger runner and network configuration endpoints. 👀

👇 Comment below how these new APIs will improve your Actions!

[reiniertimmer]

Great addition, I was already wondering how to manag our runners we have setup with Azure private networking.

I see that for GitHub runners, there is a field maximum_runners. For monitoring, it would be very helpful if a field like current_runners or active_runners could also be shown (it is visible in the UI), so we can monitor if the sizing is appropriate throughout the day

[Steve-Glass]

@reiniertimmer I'm with the Actions product team. Thanks for providing feedback! I think this would be a great addition. Especially as we continue to level up in context reporting from a UI perspective, along with ensuring the data is available via public APIs. No timeline yet as we are collecting feedback. However, I will check back in once something more concrete is planned.

[hfhbd]

I would like to use some kind of IaC for the runners and network configuration, like we can use for Azure with the bicep files.

Do you have any plans to release the network bicep files as module and publish them to GitHub Container Registry to have a versioned network config? https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-resource-manager/bicep/modules#file-in-registry

[matsest]

I see this is already available as a native Bicep resource if you want to set up Azure Private Networking for GitHub-Hosted Runners https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/templates/github.network/networksettings?pivots=deployment-language-bicep (this will cover the configuration needed for the Azure side of things).

For IaC of GitHub I guess the most likely candidate for this would be to follow the github Terraform provider, where this is currently in a feature request: integrations/terraform-provider-github#2552

[matsest]

I made a demo repo utilizing Bicep/PowerShell/gh cli to automate both Azure and GitHub: https://github.com/matsest/gh-runner-az-private-network-demo

See the included Bicep and PowerShell files for some inspiration on automating this :)

[matsest]

Thanks for finally providing this! 🎉

Regarding the API for dealing with hosted runners I see that this is only available with the "Administration" organization permissions (write) permissions. This will be too wide permissions in many cases.

It would be ideal if the permissions required to manage this also could be scoped down, in the same vein as when dealing with network configurations (requires "Network configurations" organization permissions (write)) and runner groups (requires "Self-hosted runners" organization permissions (write)). When programmatically setting up self-hosted runners this is also the case, with more granular permissions than org admin.

From an interactive user perspective I've already used the CI/CD admin role for this - which removes the need for Org admin. But it would be nice to have the API also support a least-privileged approach.

Any insights in this @Steve-Glass @samus-aran? :)