Many organizations understand that DevOps is part of their digital transformation. Companies adopt the practices at a fast pace because it helps create a culture that includes shared responsibilities, faster feedback, and higher transparency. The shrinking gap between the development and operations teams results in fewer processes. Hence, many organizations using DevOps practices are currently investing in GitOps solutions.
What is GitOps?
To accomplish continuous delivery, GitOps uses Git as the only reliable source of information for declarative infrastructure and applications. By letting teams utilize the same tools and procedures for both code and infrastructure, it seeks to extend the advantages of version control and peer review to the operations side of the development process.
One of GitOps' key benefits is that it enables teams to transparently and auditable automate the delivery and administration of infrastructure and applications. As updates to the infrastructure and apps are done through pull requests and code reviews, it also fosters teamwork and communication.
As it enables teams to employ automated tools to ensure that the desired state of the infrastructure and apps is constantly being maintained, GitOps can also aid in improving the speed and dependability of deployments. This can lessen the possibility of mistakes and downtime and make it simpler to undo changes if necessary.
Overall, GitOps has the potential to take the DevOps world by storm since it allows teams to release software more quickly and dependably while simultaneously encouraging teamwork and transparency.
What are the advantage of GitOps?
Many advantages of an agile feature branch software development workflow are also valid with GitOps. Due to the use of standard tools, adoption is simple, which is the first key benefit. Most engineers and software teams use Git, the de facto industry standard for version control systems. This makes it simple for engineers familiar with Git to contribute across functional lines and participate in GitOps.
A team can keep track of all configuration changes using a version control system. This provides a "source of truth" and a helpful audit trail to evaluate if something malfunctions or behaves erratically. Teams can look back at the history of GitOps to determine when a regression was introduced. This audit trail can also be used as a reference for security or compliance auditing. When items like encryption certificates are changed or amended, the GitOps history can be cited as evidence.
GitOps makes an organization's infrastructure requirements, which revolve around a central repository, transparent and clear. All system configurations should be kept in one central repository to facilitate team member contributions. Pull requests created using hosted Git services like Bitbucket have access to various tools for code review and commenting on discussions. This creates passive communication loops that enable the entire engineering team to keep track of and observe changes to the infrastructure.
A DevOps team's efficiency can be significantly increased via GitOps. They can swiftly test out different infrastructure setups thanks to it. A team can use Git history to roll back changes to a known good state if the new changes don't behave as planned. Since it allows for the well-known "undo" functionality in a complex system, this is immensely powerful.
How Does GitOps Work?
A supporting orchestration system handles GitOps operations. An agnostic best practice pattern, GitOps itself. Today's most common GitOps solutions rely heavily on Kubernetes role as their primary orchestration platform. Alternative GitOps tool sets that permit direct Terraform manipulation are currently on the market.
A pipeline platform is needed to implement GitOps fully. Popular pipeline tools that work in conjunction with GitOps include CircleCi, Jenkins, and Bitbucket Pipelines.
Pipelines automate and connect the orchestration system, and Git pull requests. Following the creation and activation of pipeline hooks from pull requests, commands are sent to the orchestration piece.
The GitOps "operator," a device that stands between the pipeline and the orchestration system, is a new pattern or element that is specially introduced with GitOps. The power of GitOps lies in the operator. A pull request starts the pipeline that eventually activates the operator. The operator examines the repository's condition and the beginning of the orchestration, synchronizing them.
Final Thoughts: Start Using GitOps Today
An efficient workflow approach for maintaining contemporary cloud architecture is called GitOps. The DevOps community is adapting and releasing GitOps solutions to other non-Kubernetes systems, despite its primary concentration on Kubernetes cluster management.
An engineering team can benefit from GitOps in numerous ways, including better communication, visibility, stability, and system dependability. A contemporary hosted Git platform like Bitbucket is one of the fundamental needs for a GitOps experience.
Hire the DevOps solutions providers in your journey to introduce the new technique to your operations and get results.