GitOps: The Next Big Thing for DevOps and Automation is Here!

Let’s imagine that you run an eCommerce application, which is getting high traffic during sales. However, your application is getting affected due to the unexpected malfunction of the load balancer. Therefore, it creates a bad impact on the user experience.

Now you are planning to fix this problem with a new load balancer configuration. But unfortunately, this new load balancer will introduce many other new problems like traffic management failures and halts in other functions rather than resolving the problems. Other issues occurred as you were not aware that the new load balancer was not compatible with some of the services of the cluster.

You must have a question – why are you forcing us to imagine this situation? Well, the point is, when this type of situation occurs, the DevOps team (development and operations) would want to reload the previous version of the load balancer.

This is where GitOps comes into the picture.

What is GitOps?

GitOps started in 2017 with one of the experts of Kubernetes solutions - Weaveworks. The company came up with this revolutionary idea, and since then, it has become a buzzword in Cloud Native app development.

GitOps is a set of practices allowing DevOps to handle the application setup and infrastructure with the help of Git. The architecture of GitOps is code-based. GitOps is an operational procedure that Git backs as a source control system at its foundation. It's a DevOps best practice based on Infrastructure as Code (IaC). Moreover, it uses Git as a control mechanism and a single source of truth to develop, update, and remove system architecture.

GitOps is a free, open-source continuous delivery product to execute apps in Kubernetes. If you have an overview of the Kubernetes ecosystem, you already know that it is used by a large community. GitOps uses standard development GitOps tools to assist teams in managing cloud-native and clustered applications (such as Kubernetes) with CI/CD concepts. It provides continuous delivery by using Git as a single source of truth to automate the deployment, monitoring, and administration of cloud-native applications.

GitOps ensures that changes are made safely and securely, even in a complex application. In fact, it brings agility to the development cycle. Furthermore, security is still a key differentiator when comparing GitOps to a standard CI/CD pipeline. For example, in a CI/CD pipeline, developers must share their cluster's API credentials with the CI tooling, whereas GitOps eliminates this dependency.

Here are three core GitOps principles:

• Git as a single source of truth: The teams should use Git as a version control system to monitor the evolution of the infrastructure and the implementation of its change using a simple pull-request approach.

• Infrastructure as a code: The entire system infrastructure should be referred to as a versionable file, from setting up files to the network.

• Automation: GitOps helps the DevOps teams to automate and handle the application infrastructure along with the application.

Want to Implement a New Way of DevOps Delivery?

Ask Our DevOps Experts

The Big Picture of GitOps

GIT

• Distributed version control system
• Manage source code
• Any text file tracked
• Collaboration

Ops

• Configure, build, test, deploy
• CI/CD
• Monitor, fix
• Upgrades
• Rollbacks
• Automation

GitOps

• Get version control, history, peer review, and rollback
• Continuous Delivery - Automates pipelines
• Ops practices using Git
• Use Git as a source of truth
• Webhooks: push to trigger build/test
• PR's and merge branches to deploy
• Proceed operations via Git repo

GitOps Pattern

• CI build artifacts
• Updates Config (in a Git repo)
• Trigger Rollout (PR merge/commit)
• Observe
• Control

Reason Behind the New Approach

In the recent scenario, automation has become an important key for CI/CD Automated Delivery Pipelines to send changes made to Git into your infrastructure. GitOps takes things one step further. It automates the comparison between the status of a cluster and the Git configuration using technologies like ArgoCD, Flux, and others.

GitOps by cluster operator triggers Kubernetes deployment, making the requirement for other CD tools less necessary. As a result, it's already a solid approach to follow.

As a result, CI does not require access to the cluster. For Git logs, each update triggers an automated transit. Transactions either succeed in a clean state or fail, which is why we don't require new infrastructure every time we use the code-based method.

How GitOps Works?

Now, let’s get back to the first line of the blog – from where we started. We created a situation and gave GitOps as a solution to it. But before that, let us tell you that GitOps is not restricted to Kubernetes.

So, here, we will consider the same scenario and try to learn how GitOps would have made the situation easy and simplified. But before that, take note that GitOps is already deployed.

We know there’s a rise in website traffic during the sale on your eCommerce app. So, the DevOps expert, who is working remotely, suddenly realizes that the load balancer functionality is not performing as per plan. So, they monitor the setup of the infrastructure in the GitOps repository and find a file that configures and deploys the load balancer. The team member may look over the file across the web and analyze the load balancer configuration that needs improvement.

Once the load balancer has been optimized to manage the server’s traffic, the orchestrator detects the changes and then deploys the new load balancer configuration. The team then keeps an eye on the system's new condition.

Here, the same load balancer is updated instead of building a new one with a different configuration (which could conflict with the system). This ensures that the server’s or entire system’s operation is not harmed.

To complete a comprehensive GitOps installation, you'll need a pipeline platform. Bitbucket, Jenkins, Pipelines, and CircleCi are three major pipeline solutions that complement GitOps. Pipelines bridge the gap between Git pull requests and the orchestration system by automating and closing it. Once pull requests have been set up and pipeline hooks are enabled, instructions are delivered to the orchestration component.

Advantages of GitOps

The GitOps advantages aren't limited, and they go beyond well-known technologies. Here are some impressive benefits of GitOps:

Faster Deployment

With the implementation of GitOps workflow, developers can publish updates and features to Kubernetes more quickly. You don't have to switch tools to deploy your application with GitOps. Everything takes place in the version control system that was used to construct the application in the first place.

Faster Recovery

Pull requests drive the CI/CD pipelines in GitOps. End-to-end workflows are used to handle changes in the app, infrastructure, and Kubernetes.

Easier Compliance and Auditing

When an application's environment changes, the configuration in the corresponding Git repository must be updated. This modification produces a complete history of requested state changes, as well as a record of who made the change and why. Auditing becomes easier with Git because changes are tracked and logged.

Augment Developer Experience

GitOps allows developers to utilize technologies they're already familiar with (Git for application version control) to manage Kubernetes updates/features (even if they don't know Kubernetes internally).

Increased Security

For monitoring and managing changes, Git uses cryptography. The platform also allows users to sign modifications to demonstrate authorship.

Simple Credential Management

You can handle deployments entirely from within your environment with GitOps. Your environment simply needs access to your repository and image registry to accomplish this. You don't have to grant direct access to the environment to your developers.

Is Your Project Ready for GitOps?

Get Started Now

Included Tools for GitOps

GitOps isn't only about the Kubernetes; if we want to manage the entire system declaratively and apply convergence as a "whole system", we need a cluster of Kubernetes environments, such as "dev-cluster" and "prod-cluster". Machines, clusters, apps, and interfaces to external services, such as data and monitoring, are all part of each environment.

In a similar case, we can now see how Terraform GitOps can help with the bootstrapping problem here. Using Git as a "Single Source of Truth" and GitOps workflows with K8s and IAC (Terraform), we can establish a single control plane that underpins Kubernetes and applications. That's why GitOps has the best principles and beneficial practices.

GitOps = IaC + MRs + CI/CD

GitOps Tools

Here are some of the amazing GitOps tools which you should be aware of:

• ArgoCD — Declarative continuous delivery for Kubernetes
• Atlantis — Terraform pull request automation
• Autoapply — Implement changes to a Kubernetes cluster from Git repository automatically
• FluxCD —GitOps Kubernetes operator
• Helm Operator — Automates Helm Chart releases in a GitOps manner
• Ignite — A Virtual Machine Manager, having built-in GitOps and a container UX
• Faros — CRD based GitOps controller
• Gitkube — Using git push, it builds and deploys docker images to Kubernetes
• Jenkins X — Kubernetes CI/CD platform, providing built-in GitOps, pipeline automation, and preview environments
• PipeCD — Continuous Delivery for Declarative Kubernetes, Serverless and Infrastructure Applications
• Terraform - Consistent CLI workflow to manage hundreds of cloud services

Understanding GitOps Model

A GitOps model is nothing but an operating model for developing and deploying cloud-native applications. GitOps combines Git and Kubernetes to create an operational model for building and deploying Kubernetes-based infrastructure. When Git and Kubernetes are combined, GitOps becomes an operating model.

Prerequisites for GitOps Implementation:

Here are the key prerequisites to manage your system with GitOps workflow:

• Declarative descriptions of systems are required.
• Git must be used to express the desired state of systems.
• Continuous workflows (CI/CD and Continuous Testing) should be created and implemented to apply authorized and merged changes to the system automatically.
• Change agents to discover configuration drift, i.e., the difference between the state described in a Git repository and the actual state of the system.

GitOps vs DevOps

If we write down the basic difference between GitOps vs DevOps, DevOps is a cultural change in software development, whereas GitOps offers DevOps tools and frameworks to make DevOps practice possible.

DevOps is a method in which dev teams and ops teams can work collaboratively to build and deliver cloud-native apps; besides, GitOps tools decrease the time taken to implement multiple changes in a day and execute those changes in software development.

Collaboration, CI/CD, and version control are just a few DevOps approaches. Finally, with the DevOps integration in software development, DevOps uses them to automate infrastructure and distribute applications.

Although GitOps and DevOps are based on the same concepts, their distinctions make them excellent in their own domains.

How Businesses are Implementing GitOps Model?

With DevOps implementation, many organizations have found their business operations smoother and more accurate as DevOps offers a culture of shared openness, rapid feedback, and accountability. Besides, the procedures are becoming more streamlined as the gap between development and operations teams decreases.

In the same way, GitOps has made its way in every organization to deploy your workload on Kubernetes. It does, however, broaden the DevOps process by making any source code or version management repository the single source of information for all Kubernetes architectures.

In the end, what GitOps offers:

• Continuous deployment automation boosts productivity
• A better development experience by delivering code rather than containers
• Greater stability due to an automated audit log of all cluster changes
• End-to-end workflow consistency and standardization are improved
• Git's rigorous accuracy and encryption are used to handle and analyze changes, which provides enhanced security
• Effective cost from lesser downtimes

Why Should We Care About GitOps?

GitOps is a subset of DevOps and defines an opinionated method to utilize Kubernetes to implement deployment patterns with specific tools. Instead of offering new ideas, GitOps offers an established continuous delivery concept.

In recent times, GitOps is the best method to implement in the organization to do continuous delivery with the help of Kubernetes. The numerous functionalities and features of Kubernetes will force businesses to implement the GitOps principles for their deployment.

In a nutshell, GitOps is a contemporary DevOps framework, making your deployment process easier while offering enhanced security and improved code infrastructure management. So, if you are also planning to implement GitOps in your business, you can consult experts for DevOps software development and talk about your requirements!