I’ve seen lots of teams trying to increase the availability of GitHub runners for their organization by implementing GitHub Actions Runner Controller (ARC). In some cases, they hope to try to exceed GitHub’s 99.9% SLA. Unfortunately, the math works against them. In this post, I’ll explain why.

One challenge with the GitHub’s Actions Runner Controller (ARC) is that it does not officially support Windows containers for the runners. With a little bit of work, though, it’s possible to make this configuration work on a hybrid Linux/Windows cluster.

With automation you can simplify many things as a developer. This includes automating the process of configuring commit signing with dotfiles.

Creating a well-organized build or release workflow is both an art and a science. Done properly, the process can be testable and maintainable, able to work on any CI/CD system. Like many things in software, there’s even a pattern that helps!

Looking to maintain virtual machine or Docker images in the most efficient way possible? Trying to build an image for GitHub ARC and needing to ensure you’re always using the latest available base image and runner? Then what you need is an Image Factory.