GitLab CI/CD Bootcamp| Zero to Hero| Certification Prep 2026

Create a GitLab account using a personal email or sign in with Google, then verify your email and set up a project. Explore starting a free trial.

Apply the web IDE to add files directly to a GitLab repository by editing in the browser, creating new files, and committing changes.

Explore how multi-job pipelines in GitLab CI run jobs in parallel, so a single failing job does not affect the others; learn to validate and edit pipelines in the editor.

Understand how stages structure a GitLab CI/CD pipeline by using the stages keyword, executing jobs in parallel within each stage and progressing only after all jobs succeed.

Discover how to use Linux commands in a GitLab CI pipeline, edit the CI file, run ls and pwd, and verify pipeline execution.

Learn how to add single-line and multi-line comments in GitLab CI, including a hack for multi-line comments and using a dot prefix to disable a job in pipelines.

Learn to create and use file variables in GitLab CI/CD, access their path or contents, and apply them for private keys and large configuration data in pipelines.

Learn to parameterize GitLab CI jobs by dynamically providing variable values at runtime, and override the age variable during pipeline execution to affect outcomes.

Learn how merge requests facilitate collaboration by proposing, reviewing, and approving code changes from a feature branch to the main branch, ensuring version control and code quality.

Explains how to use merge requests in GitLab to trigger pipelines on merge events or main commits, and how to create, review, and merge merge requests.

Explore matrix and loop hands-on in GitLab CI/CD by implementing parallel loops with metrics, environment variables, and nested loops across dev, test, and prod to run multiple jobs.

Trigger downstream pipelines to run a second pipeline from the first across two projects in GitLab CI/CD. Use the trigger keyword to invoke the downstream pipeline, showcasing multi-project execution.

Learn to create a self-hosted runner in the cloud with the shell executor on AWS EC2, register it in GitLab, tag EC2 Ohio Shell, install Git, and run the pipeline.

Change the docker image for a self-managed runner in GitLab CI/CD by specifying a new image tag in the pipeline, switching from Ubuntu to Alpine and confirming via logs.

Explores using a single self-hosted runner to host both Docker and shell executors, registering multiple runners in GitLab CI/CD on EC2 instances for the use case.

Discover how to publish and visualize JUnit test reports in a Maven project using GitLab CI/CD. Learn to configure artifacts and dashboards to centralize unit test results from Surefire reports.

Integrate docker build into GitLab CI/CD to create, tag, and verify Docker images for a Tomcat-based Maven app, with a clean Dockerfile, port 8080 exposure, and pipeline stages.

Integrate Docker Hub with the GitLab CI/CD pipeline to push built images, using docker login with variables and tagging images by the pipeline ID before pushing.

Explore GitLab container registry, a built-in, private, and secure alternative to Docker Hub that integrates with GitLab CI/CD to store, tag, version, and auto-clean Docker images across projects.

Configure the AWS CLI in a GitLab pipeline by creating access keys and secret keys, setting variables, running aws configure, and listing S3 buckets to verify credentials.

discover Terraform, the platform-agnostic infrastructure as code tool from HashiCorp, to define and provision servers, networks, and databases with configurations; explore init, plan, destroy, and auto-approve workflows for CI provisioning.

Set up Ansible on the runner and validate its integration with GitLab CI/CD by installing Ansible on EC2, checking the version, and running a pipeline stage.

Set up and run an Ansible playbook within a GitLab CI/CD pipeline to install git on an Amazon Linux server, using inventory, private key access, and a hosted playbook.