How GitOps Benefits Your Project Workflow

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) survey on GitOps revealed that 91% of respondents within the cloud-native communities have adopted GitOps. Teams implementing GitOps have reported deployment speeds up to 25% faster, demonstrating its impact on improving modern software development and delivery cycles.

GitOps is more than just a modern cloud terminology—it’s a refined approach to managing and deploying infrastructures, using a version control system like Git as the single source of truth.

Understanding the benefits of GitOps is crucial for any team looking to streamline their workflow. Whether through a pull-based or push-based method, GitOps offers the flexibility that allows your infrastructure to remain consistent and in the desired state.

Let’s explore GitOps—why your team needs it, the benefits it brings to your project workflow, and the core principles behind its methodology.

What is GitOps?

GitOps is a methodology that combines Infrastructure as Code (IaC) with the best practices of DevOps, such as continuous integration and delivery, process automation, and many more. It uses version control systems, such as Git, to ensure that infrastructure changes are declarative, reproducible, and automated, minimizing errors and scalability issues common with manual configuration.

A diagram illustrating the key components of GitOps.

Concept of GitOps and its relevance in DevOps

GitOps plays a pivotal role in modern DevOps by bringing the core DevOps practices into infrastructure management. It focuses on automating infrastructure changes using version control systems, such as Git, to manage and track changes. This automation reduces reliance on manual processes and helps keep workflows consistent and reliable. With GitOps, both development and operations teams can maintain strong standards in managing software and infrastructure alike.

In an interview with Alexis Richardson, he noted that even before the term “GitOps” was coined, his team successfully recovered from a potentially devastating infrastructure deployment change because the entire infrastructure was managed through a version control system (Git).

Getting started with GitOps

GitOps starts by storing your Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in a Git repository, where every change is version-controlled, auditable, and automatically applied to your infrastructure via continuous integration and deployment (CI/CD) pipelines or GitOps agents like ArgoCD. To utilize the workflow better, it’s important to understand the core principles that make GitOps effective in managing infrastructure.

Key principles behind the GitOps workflow

The GitOps workflow is built on key principles that help optimize infrastructure operations while boosting productivity, reliability, and security in development and deployment. Here are the core principles:

• Declarative descriptions: One of the key principles behind the GitOps flow is that the state of the system described by the IaC configuration or manifest files must be declarative. This means that instead of writing a series of steps to achieve a certain state, you simply declare what the end state should look like.
  Tools like Kubernetes, Docker, and Terraform define the configuration of components based on this declarative way rather than just instructions. With declarative configuration, managing infrastructure and applications becomes easier as development teams can concentrate on specifying the desired state instead of handling the underlying processes.
• Versioned and immutable: The IaC and other application configurations must be managed through a version control system (Git), which guarantees that every change is tracked, making the system versioned, immutable, and consistent across environments while providing a reliable mechanism for tracking changes and performing rollbacks when necessary.
• Automated change management and continuous reconciliation: Changes made to the configuration files within the repository automatically trigger updates to the infrastructure. The infrastructure automation pipelines are set to deploy these updates and synchronize the system state to match the desired state described within the source of truth (Git). Depending on the strategy to be implemented, the source of truth (Git) is continuously monitored. If the system detects any drift from the desired state defined in Git, GitOps agents like FluxCD, ArgoCD, or CICD platforms reconcile the system back to the desired state. The whole process is to make sure that updates are consistently and reliably applied across environments without manual intervention.
• Collaboration and security: Changes to the infrastructure are proposed through pull requests. This allows for peer review, discussion, and collaboration before merging and deploying changes.

Understanding the GitOps workflow

Now, let’s consider a practical scenario: you need to provision a cloud server, install Ubuntu Nginx, and then deploy your application. Traditionally, this would involve manually navigating through a cloud provider’s interface, configuring the server, and running commands. But what if you need to repeat this for multiple applications or environments? It quickly becomes cumbersome and error-prone.

With GitOps, you define the entire process in an IaC configuration file stored in Git. When updates are needed, your team submits a pull request to modify the configuration. Once reviewed and approved, the changes are merged into the main branch, triggering an automated CI/CD pipeline that provisions the server, installs the necessary software, and deploys your application—all without manual intervention.

An illustration showing the GitOps workflow

Tools you need when utilizing GitOps

In a GitOps workflow, several tools can be employed to effectively manage and deploy applications and infrastructure. These include:

• Container orchestration platforms: Tools like Kubernetes or Docker Swarm are essential for managing containerized applications and maintaining application states through declarative configurations.
• Infrastructure as Code (IaC) tools: Terraform and similar tools are crucial for defining and provisioning infrastructure across various cloud providers, enabling infrastructure management as code.
• GitOps operators: FluxCD and ArgoCD are prominent operators used with Kubernetes. They automate the synchronization between Git repositories and your Kubernetes cluster.

Benefits of GitOps in your project workflow

There are several benefits you can get from using GitOps principles within your project workflow. Some of these include:

Version control

With GitOps, the infrastructure configuration is centralized via the version control system, similar to a codebase on GitHub. This enables transparency and manageability at every modification to the infrastructure; everything is well-tracked, reviewed, and approved before deployment. It also uses best practices in establishing a common workflow between development and operations teams, ensuring better cooperation and reducing miscommunication so that changes in the infrastructure are, at the very least, visible and traceable, like changes to application code.

Infrastructure management and automation

One major benefit of using GitOps is the management capabilities it provides. Infrastructure changes are automatically deployed by applying the principles of continuous integration and continuous delivery that have already been applied to application code. Additionally, GitOps facilitates the consistent application of configuration files across different stages of application development, leading to predictable environments. This automation results in more reliable deployments, as the same configurations are used throughout development, testing, and production. Consequently, errors are reduced, and the need for manual intervention is minimized.

Auditability and disaster recovery

Traditional workflows often lack visibility, audit logs, and control over changes in infrastructure, leaving a production environment with unexpected issues. With GitOps, there is an explicit audit trail of everything; this greatly simplifies the identification of problems and how to rectify them.
GitOps enables versioned rollbacks to address problems such as complex rollbacks and inconsistent environments.

Improved collaboration and security

GitOps improves collaboration between development and operations teams by leveraging familiar Git workflows. Team members can propose, review, and approve changes in a controlled and transparent manner, which enhances communication and alignment and strengthens security.
Only approved changes committed to the Git repository are applied to production systems, reducing the risk of unauthorized modifications and making sure that every change undergoes a thorough review process.

Approaches in GitOps: Pull-based and push-based

There are two different approaches to GitOps deployment: Push and pull deployment.

Push-based deployment (Pipeline deployment)

The push-based approach is a method where changes to the configuration files stored on Git are automatically pushed to the target environment when these changes are committed to the Git repository. This method usually utilizes traditional CI/CD pipelines to synchronize changes and implement continuous delivery to the target environment. Several CI/CD platforms are commonly used for this approach, including Azure Pipelines, GitHub Actions, Jenkins, and GitLab CI.

The workflow: In this model, changes committed to a Git repository by a developer or automated process trigger a configured CI/CD pipeline. The pipeline validates the changes, builds necessary artifacts, and deploys them to the target environment, such as a cloud platform, on-premises servers, or a Kubernetes cluster.

An illustration showing the Push-based workflow

The benefits: The push approach is popular for its simplicity and ease of adoption, utilizing familiar CI/CD tools and methods. It allows changes to be pushed immediately to the environment, enabling quicker updates and a faster response to new requirements or issues. This approach is particularly preferred for environments outside Kubernetes, where a pull-based approach might not be practical.

Pull-based approach (otherwise known as the GitOps approach)

Unlike the push-based approach, the pull-based approach relies heavily on agents. These agents pull changes from the environment configuration repository so that the actual state of the deployed infrastructure matches the desired state defined in the Git repository. This method is ideal for scenarios needing high stability, control, and security, such as within the production environment. It is mostly used by modern cloud infrastructure in conjunction with orchestrators like Kubernetes and Docker Swarm, with several agents like ArgoCD and FluxCD to facilitate the deployment process.

An illustration showing the Pull-based approach

The workflow: There are three stages to achieving deployments using this strategy. These include:

• Agent deployment: Agents are deployed within the target environment, such as a Kubernetes cluster. These agents are responsible for monitoring the Git repository for changes.
• Continuous monitoring: The agents continuously watch the Git repository for updates to the desired state, including application configurations, infrastructure definitions, etc.
• Synchronization: When changes are detected via methods like polling, the agents automatically pull these updates and apply them to the environment.

The benefits: The pull-based approach ensures that deployments are applied to the desired environment in a controlled and secure manner. By keeping the cluster and cloud provider credentials only inside the cluster, it prevents risks like accidental exposure of configuration files. This method enhances security because it initiates synchronization processes from within the system, reducing the need for external access and thus minimizing the attack surface.
Furthermore, changes to the infrastructure configurations are automatically verified before being applied, ensuring consistent and reliable deployments. Lastly, the pull-based approach integrates smoothly with existing toolchains such as monitoring tools, CI/CD pipeline tools, alert tools, and many more, allowing organizations to adopt and implement GitOps practices without disrupting their current workflow.

Other GitOps implementations

There are platforms that allow you to manage and implement your push and pull-based approaches to the GitOps workflow more efficiently. One notable platform is Mia-Platform.

Mia-Platform offers a comprehensive GitOps implementation strategy designed to facilitate both push-based and pull-based approaches. Its approach is centered around a user-friendly graphical interface known as the DevOps Console, which provides a unified deployment console that simplifies the management of GitOps workflows. The console servers as a central hub for both operations and development teams, promoting collaboration and efficient workflow management.

Mia-Platform integrates with popular tools to support various GitOps workflows. For push-based operations, you can seamlessly connect Mia-Platform with GitHub Actions, Azure Pipelines, and GitLab CI. This allows for smooth automation of your deployment processes directly from your version control system.

For pull-based operations, Mia-Platform provides enhanced capabilities through its Mia-Platform DevOps Console via integrating tools like ArgoCD. But before using this approach, you need to enable Enhanced Project Workflow.

With Mia-Platform Console, teams can benefit from enhanced visibility and control over their GitOps processes, leading to more reliable and manageable deployments.

How does GitOps compare with CI/CD?

When comparing GitOps to traditional CI/CD practices, it’s important to note that while CI/CD automates the entire software development lifecycle—from building and testing to deploying applications—GitOps takes a more focused approach. GitOps centers on managing infrastructure through version control systems, utilizing declarative configurations and continuous reconciliation. It works hand-in-hand with CI/CD pipelines, enhancing them by providing a structured method for handling infrastructure changes.

Key takeaways

GitOps can greatly enhance your cloud-native application development process by integrating infrastructure management with the version control systems you’re already familiar with. This streamlines your workflow and boosts the resilience of your cloud resources and infrastructure, enabling you to confidently build and continuously deliver new ideas and features to your customers. Furthermore, platforms like Mia-Platform simplify the implementation of the GitOps workflow, making it easier to manage your infrastructure alongside your code.

By adopting a GitOps approach, you not only make your development process more efficient but also ensure your applications are more robust and adaptable. For more information, visit Mia-Platform’s Console page to discover how an Internal Developer Platform (IDP) can further enhance your GitOps strategy and much more.