How can we prepare GitLab runners using Ansible deploys
A gitlab runner is a process that f.e. tests, compiles your project, pushes the artefact to you artefact store etc.
A Gitlab runner can be tagged inside Gitlab or via config.toml - so - you can assign runners via tags to Gitlab projects (shared).
Gitlab runner are not designed to run an application 24x7. So - you assign a project to a runner (or a tag or all) to build you application). If you want to deploy the project, use the K8S deployment inside Gitlab (that must be connected to a specific Kubernetes environment based on you Git-branches etc). Or (just an example) run an AWX task that is able to push your new artefact via the artefact storage (docker registry). Also you could just call a SSH remote command on a script (via Gitlab runner) to start a deployment - but don't use the runner to &quot;host&quot; your environment. They will stop (per default after 1h) without a return code.