[Feature Request] Specify region for GitHub hosted runner

[ChelseyMoyer]

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As brought up before by other users, there are a number of reasons to want to run tests from a specific region of the world, IP-wise. My specific need is for testing websites. Sometimes features or legal wording is dependent upon the geolocation (IP) of the visitor. Because I cannot specify a region to GitHub Actions, I cannot automate these tests. I have to run them manually through a VPN, which is much more costly in time and effort.

All I need is a way to tell GitHub Actions to VPN as a specific state or country--a purely software solution.

Other reason people have brought up are company obligations and consistent latency (this would require, I assume, using hardware in a specific region) :
Is there a way to specify virtual machine region?
GitHub runners physical location

Please consider adding features to solve for some or all of the needs listed above. Thank you!

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[kohtala]

My use case would be to mount a Azure storage disk or file share in the runner for caching. The GitHub cache is rather limited in size and the download/upload are no match to a simple mount of the storage.

GitHub does offer some VNET support for large runners. I did not find it mentioned if it also includes some region support. I find there is some virtual network peering, which may be what is used without binding runners to a region of a VNET.

[kohtala]

I have now verified that assigning an Azure VNET to the large runner, the runner will run in the region of the VNET.

To see the runner region, I used a step

 - name: Print runner VM region
    # https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/virtual-machines/instance-metadata-service?tabs=linux
    # leaf nodes require the format=text query parameter
    run: curl -s -H Metadata:true --noproxy "*" "http://169.254.169.254/metadata/instance/compute/location?api-version=2023-07-01&format=text"

[oliverjohns]

We are running DB operations from our US-based Github runner, where the DB is located in Europe, leading to severe latency and timeout issues. This makes github runners practically unusable for us.

Please add regions.

[BlexToGo]

We provision infrastructure in datacenters around the globe via terraform running on GitHub-hosted runners and encounter timeouts due to high latency in far away regions. The ability to set regions for specific jobs or even just whole workflows would completely solve this headache for us. Currently, there is no good workaround for us other than retrying and hoping for better latency or setting up a jumphost and doing all the job steps by hand.

Please prioritize this feature 🙏

[AlexPetul]

I'm experiencing high latency pushing docker images to my Digital Ocean Container Registry located in Germany. Using hosted runner is no longer an option for me, since i have to wait more than 10 minutes for a simple operation. I have to use a separate droplet with self-hosted runner located in Europe as well. So it would be nice to have support for regions on hosted runners.

[kohtala]

You can set up a larger runner with Azure private networking in your organization. The region of the Azure VNET will determine where the runner runs.

In the supported regions, there is GermanyWestCentral that sounds close to your registry.

[Jamonygr]

For the standard hosted runners like ubuntu-latest, there still is not a simple "run this job from this country/region" switch.

There is a partial Azure-specific workaround: larger runners with Azure VNet private networking. Those use a configured Azure subnet in a supported region, so they can help with Azure latency/private endpoint scenarios. It is not really the same thing as geo-testing from a public user location, though, and private-network runners still use dynamic IPs.

I would split it like this:

• Public website geo testing: use a geo proxy/VPN service, or self-hosted runners placed in the target countries.
• Azure private resource access or latency: use Azure VNet private networking for larger runners, or place self-hosted runners in the target Azure region.
• Storage firewall by public IP: be careful with same-region Azure traffic, because Storage IP firewall rules can behave differently than expected.

The Azure VNet runner docs are here: https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/managing-organization-settings/about-azure-private-networking-for-github-hosted-runners-in-your-organization