Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery/Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines are at the heart of today’s software delivery, as they enable the automation of building, testing, and releasing software. At the same time, when developers rely on distributed systems and cloud services, they encounter some challenges, including geo-based limitations. Such restrictions can significantly set back development processes, so there is no alternative but to mitigate them. Luckily, there is a cost-effective, simple, yet effective solution – proxies. How can they help? Keep reading to know all the details.

Key takeaways

• CI/CD pipelines are sets of automated actions. They join a game when a developer commits code changes to a version control changes.  
• CI (Continuous Integration) covers building and testing stages, while CD (Continuous Deployment/Delivery) is responsible for delivering changes to the staging environment. Sometimes, it automatically deploys changes to the production environment; however, developers usually approve them manually.
• If a pipeline relies on a tool that is restricted in a particular area, it creates errors.
• Any issues, including geo-based restrictions, can cascade into numerous problems like failed builds, unreliable tests, latency, deployment inconsistencies, etc. That’s why it’s crucial to solve them ASAP.
• Proxies help you ensure consistent access across the globe, as you can route traffic via a server from a necessary location.
• In addition to solving geo-related issues, proxies improve network stability, provide security, balance load, help with debugging, and more.
• You should stay on the legal side and use proxies for allowed purposes only.

What are CI/CD pipelines, and why are they so widely used

The quick development and release of new features are what help IT companies succeed in a competitive market. To deliver upgrades and new apps faster while maintaining a decent level of product quality, it’s necessary to build processes wisely – cutting manual actions where possible, ensuring smooth collaboration across teams, etc. This is especially important for large, international companies that operate on a global scale. CI/CD pipelines have become a solution to these challenges. In fact, they are a set of automated operations that are triggered when a developer commits code changes to a version control system, such as GitHub.

CI (Continuous Integration) encompasses both building and testing stages. The pipeline complies the code and creates an executable artifact. Tests follow then, including unit, integration, and security testing. If there are bugs and tests fail, the pipeline stops, and developers receive a notification.

If the tests are successful, CD (continuous delivery/deployment) – the next phase – begins. The pipeline automatically deploys code to a staging environment, which is actually a replica of a production environment. Here, a manual approval is often necessary before a team delivers new changes to end users; however, some companies skip the step and automatically deploy them to the production environment.

CI/CD pipelines are widely used in SaaS companies or with complex, multi-service architectures. In such environments with continuous delivery, where deployments occur daily, even short disruptions can have a disproportional impact and result in significant losses of both user trust and financial resources.

That’s why even simple obstacles, such as geo-based restrictions, can be a serious headache.

The nature of geo-based restrictions in CI/CD pipelines

Location limitations occur when services used within a pipeline are unavailable in a specific area. There are several reasons for that:

• Licensing and compliance boundaries

Some SDKs, libraries, and containers are restricted in certain countries (for example, Google Services SDKs are restricted in China due to a government ban).

• Security policies

Due to safety concerns, APIs and repositories may block suspicious or just unusual traffic. As CI runners are often cloud-hosted, traffic from them is often caught in that trap.

• Provider/CDN availability areas

If dependency mirrors or package registries are unavailable in a particular region, it will cause difficulties.

• Rate limiting and traffic filtering

A provider may throttle or block traffic altogether if it originates from specific countries, known datacenters IPs, or regions with high bot activity.

Sometimes external problems aren’t the reason. Corporate restrictions, when internal systems don’t allow access to/from certain regions for compliance reasons, may be the root cause of a problem.

Problems geo-restrictions cause in CI/CD pipelines

There are a lot of complications that geo-related blocks can seed: 

• Failed builds – pipelines cannot download dependencies, access APIs, and retrieve artifacts
• Unreliable tests – external API calls used during integration tests may be blocked, making it impossible to run tests properly
• Restricted access to cloud services – CI runners may fail to reach Docker registries, git repositories, package managers (pip, Maven, etc.), Terraform state, provider APIs, and security scanning tools
• Latency – routing a pipeline around geo-based blocks may require additional time
• Deployment inconsistencies – users in various regions may receive different versions of products and data

Those problems may lead to more global issues like:

• Development velocity – unpredictable and failed pipelines block new features and fixes
• Product quality – builds may be deployed without proper testing
• Developers’ productivity – teams waste time on fixing pipeline errors when pipelines were designed to give developers more time on creating new features
• Release reliability – inconsistencies and delays may cascade into outages and sensitive data loss

How proxies help overcome geo-related challenges, and not only them, in CI/CD pipelines

Disclaimer: DataImpulse encourages you to use proxies wisely and avoid involvement in any illicit activities. Further information is provided for educational purposes. We do not bear responsibility for the unauthorized use of proxies or any resulting consequences.

A proxy server acts as a middleman. You can choose a server in a necessary location, where all services work stably, and channel CI/CD traffic through it. This helps ensure stable access worldwide and the correct operation of all tools used within a pipeline.

Additionally, edge proxy servers located near endpoints can reduce response times, speeding up integration and deployment. This is a crucial aspect for large companies with teams worldwide that require rapid communication.

Proxies also allow imitating requests via a different location. It’s useful for localization and compliance testing, as well as user experience validation and CDN behavior checks. Developers can automate multi-region testing directly inside the pipeline.

However, those aren’t the only benefits of proxies. They are also of assistance for:

• Improving network stability – proxies offer predictable routing, which you can control and help reduce packet loss. This stabilizes dependencies fetching, and interactions with external APIs.
• Balancing traffic – proxies can distribute load across multiple IPs, preventing provider throttling. This is especially good for running several pipelines simultaneously.
• Enhancing security – as proxies mask your IP, help with isolation from public networks, and control outbound access, they allow for reducing CI runners’ exposure. You can also choose proxies that encrypt traffic to add an additional layer of security.
• Creating a resilient IT infrastructure – if developers run pipelines in cloud services like GitHub actions, Jenkins, or GitLab CI, they often stumble upon shared runners with blocked IPs. Proxies act as whitelisted endpoints.
• Ensuring consistent IPs – APIs and registries may require IP whitelisting, and proxies provide predictable static IPs.
• Helping with debugging – proxies can log and monitor outbound traffic from different pipeline stages, helping identify bugs
• Reducing the risk of cross-environment influencing – you can assign separate proxies to staging, production, and internal builds to ensure stricter control.

Conclusion

CI/CD pipelines can’t be overestimated; however, they may need a bit of help to shine. Proxies not only help overcome geo-related issues but also address a range of other challenges, including latency, overload, security, and resilience. Remember, though, that only fast and legally derived IPs will make the difference. In that regard, DataImpulse is an option to choose – with 90+ million addresses from 195 locations, it will help you establish cross-region access. We also offer static proxies to ensure session stability. Contact us at [email protected] or hit the “Try now” button to start now.