The effective and reliable deployment of applications is essential in the quick-paced world of software development. This is where GitOps comes into play, revolutionizing how applications are deployed to Kubernetes clusters. GitOps is a declarative method for managing infrastructure and application configurations that makes use of version-controlled Git repositories as the single source of truth. Organizations can increase scalability, improve version control, and streamline their deployment procedures by implementing GitOps. In this article, we’ll look at the idea of “GitOps” and three of the best GitOps tools: Spinnaker, Flux, and Argo CD, with a particular emphasis on how these tools make it easier to implement GitOps in Kubernetes deployments.
Defining GitOps:
GitOps is a contemporary operational model that uses Git repositories to streamline the deployment process and keep the system in a stable state. Pull requests are used in GitOps to make any changes to the application or infrastructure, enabling version control and traceability. This method promotes collaboration and guarantees that the production environment corresponds to the specified desired state in the Git repository by enabling automated, auditable, and consistent deployments.
Why do you need GitOps tools and how do they help implement GitOps?
GitOps tools are necessary because they streamline and simplify the application of the GitOps methodology, making it simpler to manage and control the deployment of your infrastructure and applications. By using declarative configurations kept in Git repositories, these tools are essential for keeping your system in the desired state.
To guarantee consistency and reproducibility in your deployments, GitOps tools offer automation and version control features. By using declarative files, these tools allow you to specify the ideal state of your system, and any changes you make to these files automatically update your infrastructure and applications.
Continuous delivery, effective rollbacks, and improved team collaboration are all possible with GitOps tools. These tools also improve visibility and auditability, enabling seamless collaboration and simple change tracking.
The top three GitOps tools are Spinnaker, Flux, and Argo CD:
Spinnaker:
With the ability to deploy applications to Kubernetes and other cloud providers, Spinnaker is an open-source, multi-cloud continuous delivery platform. In addition to enabling rollbacks and canary deployments, it simplifies complicated deployment strategies. Teams can define their deployment pipelines as code with the help of Spinnaker, which integrates seamlessly with Git repositories and offers an intuitive web-based interface. Employing Spinnaker as a GitOps tool enables businesses to automate deployments, carry out blue-green deployments, and control intricate application rollout scenarios with ease.
Flux:
Another well-liked open-source GitOps tool for automating application deployment to Kubernetes clusters is Flux. It automatically synchronizes the desired state with the active cluster while continuously monitoring the desired state as it is stored in a Git repository. Organizations can automate deployment using Flux, ensuring that the cluster state always matches the configuration that was specified in Git. Teams can achieve version control for infrastructure and application configurations, significantly reduce manual intervention in the deployment process, and improve overall reliability by embracing Flux.
Argo CD:
Argo CD is a GitOps continuous delivery tool native to Kubernetes that is used to manage the lifecycle of an application, from deployment to updates and rollbacks. It offers YAML manifests, kept in Git repositories, as a declarative means of defining applications and their constituent parts. Argo CD maintains continuous synchronization by automatically comparing the desired state in Git with the actual state in the Kubernetes cluster. This robust tool makes it simple to manage and visualize the status of applications and deployments by providing a web-based user interface, a CLI, and an API.
Out of these 3 tools, argo cd, is the most popular open source tool to implement GitOps by devops platforms. However, there are many challenges with GitOps that Ozone as a platform is aiming at solving:
Disadvantages of argoCD
Complex Setup and Configuration: Setting up Argo CD initially can be complex, especially for users who are new to the tool or GitOps concepts. Configuring synchronization sources, repositories, and access controls might require some learning curve.
Ozone solves it as
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- Easy configuration for your git repository, registry and cluster
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- RBAC to give fine-grained access to users
Customization Challenges: While Argo CD can be extended with custom resources and hooks, implementing complex customization scenarios might require deep knowledge of Kubernetes and Argo CD’s architecture
Ozone solves it as
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- Flexible pre-defined tekton pipelines and tasks that leverage reusable pipelines
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- Powerful low-code pipeline builder for building and configuring pipelines
Limited Built-in Notifications: While Argo CD can notify users of deployment events, its built-in notification mechanisms might be limited for some teams’ needs. Customizing notifications might require additional tools or scripts.
Ozone Solves it as
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- A customizable, automated, multi-channel notification system
Limited Support for Non-Kubernetes Resources: Argo CD is primarily designed for Kubernetes resources and might not be the best choice for managing other types of infrastructure. While it can manage Helm charts and Kustomize configurations, its support for non-Kubernetes resources is more limited.
Ozone solves it as
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- Non kubernetes systems like using VM’s for deployment can be plugged in via tekton tasks
Evolving GitOps with Tekton Triggers
Tekton Triggers is a component of the Tekton Pipelines project, which is a Kubernetes-native framework for building continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. Tekton Triggers extends the capabilities of Tekton Pipelines by providing event-driven triggers and automation, allowing you to automate your workflows in response to various events in your Kubernetes environment.
Tekton Triggers work by enabling event-driven automation of CI/CD pipelines within Kubernetes environments. They allow you to define triggers that respond to various events, such as code commits, image updates, external webhooks, timers, and more. These triggers activate pipeline runs, automating the execution of defined workflows in response to specific events. There are two major triggers in the form of webhooks and schedules.
What can You do with Triggers?
As an example, you can implement the following CI/CD workflow with Triggers:
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- Triggers listen for a git commit or a git pull request event. When it detects one, it executes a unit test Pipeline on the committed code.
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- Triggers listen for a git push event indicating the test finished successfully. When it detects one, it validates the test’s outcome and executes a Pipeline that builds the tested code.
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- When the associated PipelineRun completes execution, Triggers checks the outcome of the build, and if it’s successful, executes a Task that uploads the build artifacts to the Docker registry of your choice.
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- Finally, the Docker registry sends an event to Pub/Sub, which triggers a Pipeline that pushes the build artifacts to a staging environment
However, as Tekton is inherently a complicated platform to work with, Ozone abstracts away the complexities and provides an intuitive low-code UI, thus making Tekton and its powerful capabilities accessible to everyone.
Ozone extends Tekton capabilities and boasts of a variety of native capabilities. Sign-up now to find out more!
