GitOps: A Deep Dive Into The Role of Code Repositories in DevOps

GitOps: A Deep Dive Into The Role of Code Repositories in DevOpsThe fundamental technology of the GitOps development approach is GitHub, which is an application version control repository. All development assets are stored in the repository, which serves as a single source of truth. Code modifications may be automated with GitOps thanks to DevOps pipeline orchestration. This is a key component of CI/CD workflows.

To remain versatile in a DevOps environment, application developers need to utilize tools that enable them to code without spending time on repetitive tasks. A tool from Amplication.com is ideal for exactly this use case. With a simple and intuitive UI or CLI, you can easily design data models and configure role-based access control, all while continuously pushing produced code to your GitHub repository during CI/CD.

What makes GitOps unique?

GitOps delivers a trustworthy and centralized version of developed apps by giving a single code source. Overall, this improves development teams’ productivity by saving them time by allowing them to push code into the repository rather than complete containers. Because code deployment can be automated, there is a considerable increase in speed and the effectiveness of the CI/CD process. GitOps results in shorter downtimes due to its availability while safeguarding code behind industry-leading security procedures. Finally, GitOps’ stability improves the resiliency of development workflows.

What would a GitOps workflow look like?

A GitOps process is made up of four components: a Git repository, a continuous delivery (CD) pipeline, an application deployment tool, and a monitoring system.

  • For application settings and code, the Git repository is the final version of the truth.
  • The CD pipeline is the driving mechanism behind developing, testing, and releasing the developed application.
  • The deployment tool is used to manage the target environment’s application resources.
  • The application’s performance is tracked by the monitoring system, which offers feedback to the development team. This assists the team to gauge the health of the environment.

Benefits of utilizing GitOps

GitOps has several advantages, including increased efficiency and security, lower costs, and faster deployments. Organizations may use GitOps to manage their whole infrastructure and application development lifecycle with just one tool.

This facilitates team collaboration and coordination, resulting in fewer errors and quicker problem resolution. GitOps also enables enterprises to use the most up-to-date DevOps strategies and tools, such as containerization and microservices.

What is the difference between DevOps and GitOps?

Between GitOps and DevOps, there are a few important distinctions. To begin with, GitOps depends largely on automation and technology to manage and release code changes, whereas DevOps places a greater emphasis on team communication and collaboration. Furthermore, GitOps is frequently used in conjunction with containerization technologies such as Kubernetes, whereas DevOps can be applied to any type of application.

GitOps is a subset of DevOps that focuses on managing infrastructure and application code deployments using git repositories. The primary difference is that in GitOps, the source of truth for the deployment state is the git repository, whereas, in DevOps, it is the application or server configuration files.

Downsides to GitOps

Keeping highly private information on Git is not a good idea from a policy standpoint. Because Git is designed to retain versioning history, the information you upload will be saved permanently. This implies that the repository of confidential information could grow to a point where it becomes a compliance concern.

All deployments in GitOps are managed by the .yaml file pull request. When we start running our pipeline in many clusters, each one will have its own set of configuration parameters. Because the script is imperative, it cannot automatically adapt to the environment. This means that each environment will require a different deployment script. As we add more environments – clusters and Namespaces — to our workflow setup, the challenge rises.

The GitOps methodology and tools are only focused on the application’s deployment. End-to-end software development is not aided by GitOps.

Conclusion

Because this approach to development deployment is still comparatively new in the market some evolution will still happen to fill the market and functionality-related gaps. It is the prerogative of each organization to decide whether they will implement GitOps to accompany DevOps. This process can however be integrated seamlessly when the right tools are used.