GitOps – A Framework to Implement DevOps Best Practices

02 May GitOps – A Framework to Implement DevOps Best Practices

Introduction

In the ever-evolving world of DevOps, GitOps has emerged as a powerful framework that leverages Git’s potential to the fullest. GitOps, a term coined by Weaveworks, is a way to do Kubernetes cluster management and application delivery. It works by using Git as a single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and applications.

What is GitOps?

GitOps is a paradigm or a set of practices that empowers developers to perform tasks which typically fall under the purview of IT operations. GitOps requires us to describe and observe systems with declarative specifications that can be version controlled and managed with Git.

Why GitOps?

The adoption of GitOps brings numerous benefits to the table:

1. Increased Productivity: GitOps allows developers to use familiar tools like Git and Continuous Deployment tools.
2. Enhanced Developer Experience: Developers are more comfortable coding, reviewing pull requests and merging, rather than writing scripts and manual deployment.
3. Improved Stability: GitOps provides a stable framework for cloud-native application delivery.
4. Better Security: With Git at the center of your delivery pipelines, every pull request has a traceable record. This improves auditability and compliance.

GitOps Best Practices

Here are some best practices to follow while implementing GitOps:

1. Use Declarative Infrastructure: All resources should be defined declaratively. Declarative descriptions are idempotent, meaning they can be reapplied without changing the outcome.
2. Version Control System as a Single Source of Truth: The canonical desired system state should be versioned in Git. This makes it easy to track every change.
3. Automated Delivery: Changes to the desired state in version control should automatically result in system state change. This ensures a fast and consistent delivery.
4. Software Agents to Ensure Correctness: Software agents should continuously monitor and ensure correctness. An alert should be triggered if there’s a divergence between the desired and actual state.

Conclusion

Embracing GitOps practices can lead to more efficient and reliable delivery pipelines, making it an excellent choice for teams looking to scale their DevOps efforts. As the cloud-native ecosystem continues to evolve, GitOps is likely to play an increasingly important role in how we build and manage our systems.