I apparently mistakenly added the checklist for gitlab in the ganeti
page

howto/gitlab.md

@@ -989,6 +989,24 @@ is being exceeded.
 By default the token lifetime is 5 minutes. This setting can be changed via the
 GitLab admin web interface, in the Container registry configuration section.
 
+## Testing service functionality
+
+When we perform important maintenance on the service, like for example when
+moving the VM from one cluster to another, we want to make sure that everything
+is still working as expected. This section is a checklist of things to test in
+order to gain confidence that everything is still working:
+
+* [ ] logout/login
+* [ ] check if all the systemd services are ok
+* [ ] running gitlab-ctl status
+* repository interactions
+  * [ ] cloning
+  * [ ] pushing a commit
+  * [ ] running a ci pipeline with build artifacts
+* [ ] pulling an image from containers.tpo
+* [ ] checking if the api is responsive (TODO add example test command)
+* [ ] look at the web dashboard in the admin section (TODO add URL to that dashboard)
+
 ## Disaster recovery
 
 In case the entire GitLab machine is destroyed, a new server should be