GitOps Methodologies, Process, and Best Practices | Spiceworks – Spiceworks News and Insights

In GitOps, Git is combined with the convergence properties of Kubernetes. The resulting framework serves as an operating model developers can use to build and deliver Kubernetes-based applications and infrastructure. Developers are empowered to take “You own it, you ship it!” beyond a mere mantra and make it an actionable motto to execute operations.

A key goal of GitOps is empowering developers to execute tasks typically within IT operations’ purview. It requires users to observe and describe systems using declarative specifications to form the basis of continuous everything, including but not limited to continuous integration (CI), analytics, testing, delivery, deployment, and governance.

Why go for GitOps?

In a nutshell, companies investing in a DevOps culture can leverage the GitOps framework to realize the results its philosophies and approaches promise.

Using Git-based workflows familiar to developers, GitOps expands upon established processes from application development to deployment, infrastructure configuration, and application lifecycle management. Modifications made during any application lifecycle stage can be traced within the Git repository and audited as required. Changes made via Git also allow developers to code without resources being held up at the operations level.

On the other hand, ops teams can leverage change visibility to trace and reproduce issues swiftly, enhancing general speed, security, and usability. An audit trail updated in real-time also allows organizations to minimize the risk of unwanted changes and fix issues before they enter production. The bottom line is that there are more agile teams with greater responsiveness to changes.

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History of GitOps

In the swiftly evolving cloud technology space, GitOps has gained significant popularity in recent years. Before we study the framework in more detail, let us dive in and explore its history, from its early beginnings to its industry-wide adoption and the growth of the overall GitOps ecosystem.

The time before GitOps (2014)

About a decade ago, cloud vendors (especially in the PaaS space) dabbled in application development capabilities that were easy to use and could be run anywhere in the cloud. However, these solutions ultimately could not provide more than the 12-factor application model, which faced setup, scaling, and load-balancing challenges for data-driven enterprise applications. This was addressed by the introduction of Docker containers, which provided a simple operating model for a single node. Soon, containers became an industry standard.

The rise of container orchestration (2015)

Enter Weaveworks, a company established to simplify the building of applications like Redis as a service and RabbitMQ as a service. It created a networking product known as Weave Net to fill the gaps.

Soon, the company realized there was a demand for cloud-based container management and monitoring among developers. To address this need, Weaveworks built a tool known as Weave Cloud that minimizes the complexity of operating Kubernetes clusters.

Weave Cloud itself relied on containers to run. So Kubernetes was ultimately chosen as the container orchestrator for its management. While this was the best choice then, it had architectural issues and was quite complicated.

A practical use case (2016)

As Kubernetes operations were streamlined and improved, the Weaveworks team became bolder and started deploying higher-risk changes into production. One day, an engineer pushed one such risky change that failed and wiped out the entire system.

However, the system was comprehensively described in various Git config files, allowing the Weaveworks team to restore it in just 40 minutes or so. The system included the cluster, the application, monitoring, and other components.

Turns out, Weaveworks was practicing GitOps before the term even existed! Systemic changes made were first committed and then propagated automatically until deployed in production. Permanent changes were restricted, and every modification had to be committed to the system of record. The desired state was stored in a distributed, resilient, non-repudiable, authenticated, and secure GitHub instance.

GitOps is born (2017)

After the incident, the team made a comprehensive list of the principles they used to operate their Kubernetes system. The principles were then distilled into the few most important ones. Concurrently, Alexis Richardson, CEO of Weaveworks, coined the term “GitOps” to describe the approach of making operations automatic based on a system model stored in Git.

Attention and adoption (2018)

GitOps soon gained attention in the cloud-native ecosystem for its simplicity and uniqueness. Major cloud providers, including AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud, started adopting the framework. Weaveworks published guides and FAQs to facilitate greater understanding among industry players.

Flux, Flagger, and progressive delivery (2019)

Next came Flux and Flagger, open-source tools released by Weaveworks to enable progressive delivery using GitOps. Flux and Flagger made GitOps more operational for enterprises and pushed the growth of the GitOps collaborative community.

Building an ecosystem (2020)

Despite the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, GitOps virtual events flourished. GitOps Days, organized by Weaveworks and industry experts, gained prominence. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) recommended Flux in their technology radar, while Flagger was adopted as a CNCF project. The GitOps Working Group was established under CNCF oversight, with support from industry leaders. Weaveworks launched the Weave Kubernetes Platform (WKP), a GitOps-based solution for managing Kubernetes clusters across environments.

The growth story continues (2021 and beyond)

Weaveworks secured funding and received recognition for GitOps. Flux and Flagger were promoted to incubating status at CNCF, indicating their value. Weaveworks introduced a tiered Weave GitOps product, enabling enterprises to adopt GitOps and standardize best practices for continuous application delivery and operations in multicloud environments.

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Key Principles of GitOps

When the configuration of an application is defined declaratively, Git can be relied on as a single source of truth. Applications can be deployed and rolled back to and from Kubernetes easily. Plus, cluster infrastructure can be reproduced swiftly as a disaster recovery measure.

#2 Versioned and immutable

System declarations are stored in a version-controlled environment and serve as a canonical source of truth. This gives users a comprehensive repository that can be used to derive and drive anything. As a result, rollbacks become simple, and a “Git revert” can be used to revert to a previous application state at any time.

The security assurances that Git provides also allow users to use a secure shell (SSH) key to sign all commits and enforce code authorship and provenance guarantees. Version storage is designed to be immutable and unchanging over time, making it an effective way to establish an audit trail.

#3 Automatic pulls

Once the user keeps the declared state in Git, any modifications to that state must be automatically allowed to be applied to the overall system. Cluster credentials are not required to implement this. GitOps allows access to a segregated environment that is not within the defined state. This enables users to separate what they do and how.

In specific cases, users might want to include a manual review step before deployment, which GitOps supports. However, the objective is to enable changes from Git to go to Kubernetes clusters without human intervention or review as long as all automated tests and checks are passed. Policies are a key step towards enabling this form of automated deployment.

#4 Continuous reconciliation

Once the user ensures that the system state is version-controlled and declared, they can use software agents to stay updated if there is a mismatch between expectations and reality. Agents are also used to ensure that the entire system can heal itself when required. Kubernetes can handle node or pod failure directly, while GitOps can flag and fix human errors. Software agents can be seen as feedback and control loops for user operations.

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GitOps Methodologies and Process

Infrastructure updates are automated in GitOps by using a Git workflow with continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD). Upon merging new code, the change is enacted in the environment via the CI/CD pipeline. Configuration drifts like errors or manual changes are overwritten by GitOps automation to allow the environment to converge on the desired state as defined in Git. While CI/CD pipelines are used to manage and implement GitOps automation, definitions operators and other forms of automation may also be used.

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Benefits and Challenges of GitOps

GitOps also helps enterprises leverage microservices and containers and maintain cross-infrastructural consistency, from Docker images and Kubernetes cluster configurations to on-premises and cloud instances.

Challenges of GitOps

Cultivating a culture of greater collaboration can be difficult, as it does not come naturally to everyone.

It is important to note that the GitOps approval process starts with developers modifying code, creating a merge request, having the changes merged by an approver, and finally, having the change deployed. This sequence is essentially a form of “change by committee” that might not be welcomed by engineers used to making manual changes quickly.

The team, without exception, must also record everything going on in merge requests and issues. The temptation to make manual edits in production would have to be suppressed.

Implementing new collaborative efforts is always tricky, and GitOps is no exception. The process change that is GitOps must come with discipline from all stakeholders and a commitment to bringing its principles to fruition. Teams must also be prepared to make a lot of notes.

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Best GitOps Tools

Argo CD keeps all configuration logic in Git, enabling developers to leverage existing code development workflows connected to Git repositories. It supports multiple configuration management tools like Helm, Kustomize, and Jsonnet and integrates with various authentication systems for secure access. Finally, Argo CD streamlines the continuous deployment process for Kubernetes applications with features such as rollback support, resource health analysis, configuration drift detection, and real-time visibility.

Codefresh

Codefresh leverages the power of the open-source Argo project for Kubernetes and GitOps workflows. With Codefresh, teams can benefit from the best practices of GitOps while maintaining control and flexibility. The tool offers a secure and validated runtime, enabling the use of Argo Workflows, Events, CD, and Rollouts with confidence.

Codefresh provides end-to-end visibility into CI/CD workflows, streamlining deployment strategies like canary and blue-green. It also features a unified user interface, centralized management control plane, and integrations with popular tools for a seamless software delivery process. Finally, Codefresh offers support and additional security validation for Argo components.

Flux CD

Flux CD is an open-source tool that ensures that the state of a Kubernetes cluster aligns with the configuration stored in Git. It utilizes a cluster operator to initiate deployments within Kubernetes, eliminating the need for a separate continuous delivery tool. Flux monitors image repositories in real-time, detects new images, and triggers deployments based on configurable policies.

Key features of Flux CD include:

• Flexible deployment methods like canaries, A/B rollouts, and feature flags
• Built-in management of infrastructure and workload dependencies
• Seamless integration with various Git providers and CI workflow platforms
• Multi-tenancy support with role-based access control and Cluster API integration
• Atomic and transactional modifications with an audit log maintained in Git.

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Top GitOps Best Practices for 2023

Once GitOps is established as a good fit at the enterprise level and the major stakeholders are on board, gradual forward growth is the next step. Even teams with extensive experience in automation, orchestration, and containerization would do well by starting small rather than trying to establish a complex environment wherein everything is automated from the get-go.

A good place to begin is with basic GitOps practices like deployment automation and continuous delivery. Users can also set up a simple Kubernetes cluster with a trusted cloud provider, synchronize their Git repository with the infrastructure, and deploy a simple Nginx server. This gives all stakeholders ample opportunity to learn how things will work going forward.

Automate deployments

A key benefit of GitOps is the automation of deployments. Scripts and code will automatically deploy modifications without needing any form of human intervention. This leads to a more repeatable, predictable, and reliable process for pushing code changes to production.

CI/CD tools are the most effective way to implement such automation. However, while some CI/CD solutions are focused on deployment automation, others are not. Therefore, it is recommended that users understand the workings of these tools before automating them.

Use GitOps for continuous delivery

Continuous delivery is a fundamental concept of GitOps. It provides a production environment that is always prepared for deployment and new code releases. With continuous delivery, teams can develop new features more efficiently and deploy them as soon as development is completed.

With the correct implementation of this best practice, the development team can deploy code to production as often as required without affecting other stakeholders. Downtime or service interruptions are also avoided because every time a new change is pushed, all other changes are rolled back automatically.

Standardize the GitOps approach

As the GitOps implementation of the organization becomes more mature, certain aspects need to be standardized to ensure all stakeholders are on the same page.

For instance, it is critical to pay attention to the way cluster or infrastructure changes are enforced. Additionally, users must decide whether to leverage the push or pull methodology of GitOps. Ideally, nothing should be pushed directly to the master branch. Rather, the pull approach is recommended, as it allows a pull request to act as an application for allowing the changes to advance through the workflow in an orderly and secure fashion. Additionally, automation should be implemented wherever possible to remove human intervention from repeatable tasks.

Experiment with GitOps tools

GitOps is a fairly new yet highly popular framework, making it ripe for experimentation. Organizations with the right know-how can benefit greatly by experimenting with cutting-edge GitOps tools. Finding the right GitOps tool for the exact use case of the organization can help implement lightning-fast software delivery. It might also be wise to hire an experienced consultant if the in-house talent profile is insufficient for effective GitOps implementation.

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Takeaway

GitOps is a powerful workflow framework for cloud infrastructure management. While GitOps emphasizes Kubernetes cluster management, the DevOps community is also applying it to other non-Kubernetes systems. GitOps has the potential to revolutionize engineering at the industry level with benefits including improved communication, stability, reliability, and visibility.

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