What Is GitOps and why is this the next buzzword

What Is GitOps and Why it is called the “Single Source Of Truth”

Nowadays, we hear a lot of chatter going around GitOps, and are you wondering what it is all about? Why should you care about it if you are into either development, testing, or software deployment? In this article, we’ll discuss everything you wanted to know about GitOps and why it is called the Single Source of Truth in DevOps.

What is GitOps?

Software development is not just writing code, but it involves various other aspects right from the proper infrastructure, analysis, design, testing, deployment, security, etc. Software companies generally invest a lot in purchasing different 3^rd party tools and software to use them through the various phases of development.

But with GitOps, you manage every aspect of development-to-deployment, including code, build, provision, and deploy using Git. Yes, GitOps ensures that you use Git right from development to implementation.

GitOps allows you to simplify both operational jobs as well as application deployment easily as everything is built inside Git.

In other words, DevOps is all about code, and Git is used everywhere right from coding to deployment. i.e., from end to end. And that is the reason it is named as GitOps. The name GitOps was first coined by a team of developers in Weaveworks who considered Git as a “Source of Truth” and intended to use if for everything, even placing the infrastructure code in the git repository.

Why You Need GitOps?

GitOps is a workflow process where Git is used to storing every information, code, build knowledge, documentation, Kubernetes code, etc. In GitOps, automated directors are mainly used to deploy and monitor every bit of changes made to the cluster. Since the complete state of the system is stored in Git, anyone in the team can see the entire audit trail of changes made to the system.

Every commit associated with a deployment, the person made the commits, timestamps of the commits made, information about every commit can all be backtracked at any point in time.

It means that Git houses not only the application code but also the infrastructure code with complete versioning information. With GitOps, teams get automated slack alerts when diff tools detect any mismatched deployment. Hence, using GitOps makes it a lot easier for the development team to code, build, monitor, and deploy.

With GitOps,

Even the state of the system is version controlled on Git

• A declarative description is available for the entire system
• All approved changes can be quickly deployed into the system
• Productivity increases by a large extent
• Diff tools and other monitoring tools ensure no mismatch in the system

Benefits of GitOps

There are various benefits when development teams apply the best practices of GitOps. Some of them are listed below:

Speedy Development

With GitOps, managing every feature and updates made to the Kubernetes is made quite effectively and quickly. GitOps enables teams to push changes rapidly one after the other and hence can respond to customer requests effectively.

Improved Developer Experience

With GitOps, development teams don’t push containers but only the code into the Git repository. Not all members of the team need to have in-depth knowledge about Kubernetes but still manage to update and add features. Even newbies can quickly pick up the pace and start deploying effectively.

Enhanced Productivity

With the use of automated continuous deployment tools, development teams can push more changes to production than before. It not only increases productivity to a great extent but also ends up satisfying the customer requests quickly as well.

Increased Stability

With GitOps, You have a birds-eye view of the complete audit trail of changes made to the system, including who made the changes, what time the changes made, what is in the changes made to the cluster, etc., It increases the stability of the system to a great extent. It helps in meeting the SOC2 compliance as well.

Greater Reliability

Git provides dev teams with a lot of advantages as they can revert/rollback any changes, and all the rollbacks are reproducible as well. Since the complete project details, including infrastructure, are available in Git, it provides development teams with a single source to recover everything in case of a breakdown or any mishap. Git also reduces the recovery time by a considerable margin.

Consistency Throughout

With GitOps, you can have a separate model for making changes to applications and infrastructure. Hence, you only follow a single model workflow through Git, and that enables teams to maintain a consistent workflow right from build to deployment. All changes made are driven by pull requests, whether it is changed to Kubernetes, apps, or infrastructure.

Increased Security

With GitOps at your disposal, development teams can feel relaxed as they cannot expect any untoward incidents are happening overnight. Since everything is inside a controlled and monitored environment, the system is highly safe and secure.

GitOps – The Next Best Thing in DevOps

With GitOps, both development and operations go hand in hand and that too in a single, controlled, and highly monitored environment. Imagine the situation the development teams work today. Deployment is made, the QA team does some testing, and everything seems rosy, and the team leaves for home. But suddenly something breaks or some files are found missing, causing a functionality to break. It not only creates a lot of issues to the development team but severe headaches to the customer as well.

But with GitOps, everything is controlled and monitored, and any mismatch is notified immediately. The main reason that GitOps is considered to be the next big thing in DevOps is that it makes workflow more simple, straightforward, and useful. Moreover, issues are identified immediately and can be dealt with quickly.

Even though GitOps is a concept or a workflow developed by Weaveworks might not please everyone, the broader idea behind the idea is what makes it worth watching out. Do you want to know more about GitOps? You are welcome to visit us, we have Workshops & Meetups every Thursday in our office in Voorschoten or you can contact us anytime!