ArubaCloud GitHub Runner

On-demand self-hosted GitHub Actions runners on Aruba Cloud — a fresh, ephemeral server for every workflow run.

What is this?

acloud-github-runner is a GitHub composite Action that provisions and tears down Aruba Cloud cloud servers as ephemeral GitHub Actions runners. The pattern is called "New Workflow, New Server":

• A lightweight orchestration job (on a GitHub-hosted runner) calls this action in create mode.
• The action provisions an Aruba Cloud server via acloud-cli, injects a cloud-init script, and waits for the GitHub runner agent to register.
• Your actual CI job runs on the ephemeral runner (runs-on: ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.label }}).
• A final job (with if: always()) calls this action in delete mode to terminate the server.

Key features

• No idle costs — servers exist only for the duration of the job.
• No shared state — each run gets a pristine OS image.
• Auto-provisioning — omit vpc_id, subnet_id, and security_group_id and the action creates them automatically, then cleans up after itself.
• Bring your own network — pass existing resource IDs to reuse pre-created infrastructure.
• Configurable — choose flavor, image, boot disk size, runner labels, and inject pre-boot scripts.

Quick start

name: CI on Aruba Cloud

on: [push]

jobs:
  start-runner:
    name: Start ephemeral runner
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    outputs:
      label:                 ${{ steps.runner.outputs.label }}
      server_id:             ${{ steps.runner.outputs.server_id }}
      project_id:            ${{ steps.runner.outputs.project_id }}
      boot_disk_id:          ${{ steps.runner.outputs.boot_disk_id }}
      auto_vpc_id:           ${{ steps.runner.outputs.auto_vpc_id }}
      auto_subnet_id:        ${{ steps.runner.outputs.auto_subnet_id }}
      auto_security_group_id: ${{ steps.runner.outputs.auto_security_group_id }}
    steps:
      - uses: Arubacloud/acloud-github-runner@v1
        id: runner
        with:
          mode:                 create
          github_token:         ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}
          acloud_client_id:     ${{ secrets.ACLOUD_CLIENT_ID }}
          acloud_client_secret: ${{ secrets.ACLOUD_CLIENT_SECRET }}
          acloud_project_id:    ${{ secrets.ACLOUD_PROJECT_ID }}
          # vpc_id, subnet_id and security_group_id are optional —
          # the action creates them automatically when omitted.
          flavor:               CSO2A4   # 2 vCPU / 4 GB RAM
          image:                LU22-001 # Ubuntu 22.04 LTS

  build:
    name: Build
    needs: start-runner
    runs-on: ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.label }}
    steps:
      - uses: actions/checkout@v7
      - run: echo "Running on Aruba Cloud!"

  stop-runner:
    name: Stop ephemeral runner
    needs: [start-runner, build]
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    if: always()
    steps:
      - uses: Arubacloud/acloud-github-runner@v1
        with:
          mode:                   delete
          github_token:           ${{ secrets.GH_PAT }}
          acloud_client_id:       ${{ secrets.ACLOUD_CLIENT_ID }}
          acloud_client_secret:   ${{ secrets.ACLOUD_CLIENT_SECRET }}
          acloud_project_id:      ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.project_id }}
          server_id:              ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.server_id }}
          boot_disk_id:           ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.boot_disk_id }}
          auto_vpc_id:            ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.auto_vpc_id }}
          auto_subnet_id:         ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.auto_subnet_id }}
          auto_security_group_id: ${{ needs.start-runner.outputs.auto_security_group_id }}

See Getting Started for secrets setup and Usage for detailed examples.