Git is rude. On its own, the British slang term git refers to an ill-tempered, curmudgeonly misanthrope. Once enriched with its meaning inside the world of enterprise software application development, git (or indeed Git) is not rude at all; in this context, it is a distributed version control system used by software engineers to collaboratively track the progress of their project’s codebase as it sits in the Git repository.
This widely popular software development tool has been around since 2005 and was so named because – jokingly – creator Linus Torvalds (he of Linux fame) quipped that he had to name all his projects after himself and, therefore, that he must be an irascible git.
While Mr Torvalds is generally agreed to be far from cantankerous in general terms, the name stuck.
So what is Git when applied to operations (as in the Ops in DevOps), how does it crystallize to develop into GitOps and what lessons could that teach non-programming laypersons about the collaborative nature of the way this platform enables people to do their job?
What is GitOps?
Because of the drive to create ever more powerful and effective cloud-native applications, software engineers have taken tried and trusted DevOps principles and applied them to infrastructure – and the primary approach here comes in the form of GitOps.
“In short, GitOps enables developers to automate infrastructure and manage it alongside their codebase, using Git to manage infrastructure and configure applications. As an open source version control system, Git serves as a single source of truth for declarative infrastructure and applications, with GitOps employing Git ‘pull requests’ [that point when new code is ready to join the main project] to manage it automatically. At the same time, the Git repository stores a visible changelog of the system’s state,” explains Amir Jerbi, co-founder and CTO of Aqua Security, a company known for its Cloud Native Application Protection Platform (CNAPP).
To clarify here then, DevOps itself does not necessarily have to implement GitOps. The two cultures, methodologies, principles or operational ethos systems (label them as you will) share commonalities and differences. GitOps and DevOps both make use of the Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) approach common to modern cloud-native deployments; they both employ and embrace software code reviews, code version control and Continuous Integration & Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) pipelines. But there are crucial differences to highlight here as well.
“For example, GitOps is often employed in conjunction with Kubernetes [a cloud container orchestration technology], Infrastructure-as-Code (IaC) and various Continuous Integration & Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. The primary objective here is to expedite the development and minimize dependence on intricate software code scripts [typically a sequence of instructions designed to be interpreted by another software program] to make software work better,” explains Aqua’s Jerbi.
GitOps also introduces greater fluidity between the development and operations sequences, reducing the strict barriers traditionally associated with these processes.
“On the other hand,” clarifies Jerbi. “DevOps represents a cultural shift rather than a specific technique. It promotes the use of a range of CI/CD pipelines, giving teams the flexibility to choose their tools without being restricted by a specific example, such as Git. In fact, DevOps can be used with various tools, not limited to but including cloud Configuration-as-Code and supply chain management. Ultimately, the main aim of DevOps is to widen the use of automation in the development process in order to enable more frequent deployments – fostering a culture of continuous delivery. In contrast to GitOps, DevOps typically maintains distinct steps for development and operations within its pipelines.
Unpacking GitOps benefits
When considering the benefits GitOps is bringing to developers, Jerbi argues that it becomes easier to understand the reasons behind its increasing adoption and he provides a number of key reasons what below:
- Simplified deployment on Kubernetes: GitOps reduces the learning curve and mitigates many operations-related challenges that developers typically encounter when deploying applications on Kubernetes. This makes the deployment process more efficient and less prone to errors.
- Enhanced security & observability: By using Git to guide infrastructure and application deployment, GitOps makes changes to any resource more observable through effective version control, improving overall software security.
- Improved productivity: GitOps improves developer productivity by enabling coders to deploy workloads quickly and with minimal effort – capabilities which also help boost confidence in the overall process.
- Effective control mechanism: GitOps acts as a control mechanism, ensuring that the operations team does not face a rise in incidents and workload problems to address. It also promotes a proactive approach, helping to prevent issues rather than just responding to them after the fact.
Positive experimentation
“GitOps also provides an environment that is conducive to a trial-and-error approach,” said Jerbi. “This means that developers can experiment with changes and new ideas, knowing that if something goes wrong, it is a straightforward process to revert to a previous stable state. This encourages innovation, as developers aren’t penalized for errors but can learn from them in an environment that promotes continuous improvement.”
If anything, this last point may be the most illustrative of where a technology like this could help businesspeople.
If we are to create workplace environments with new abilities to ‘sandbox’ and prototype ideas inside experimental zones (perhaps with the use of AI and virtuality reality in some cases), then we may be able to graduate some of the work in progress that happens in these places to what are sometimes called Proof of Concept (PoC) labs and eventually into live production environments. Of course, the business world never has quite that luxury element of automated roll-back for what-of scenarios, but the concept is strong and could easily be championed by project managers outside of the IT department.
Aqua’s Jerbi wraps up by saying that in considering all these points, it’s important to note that GitOps does not act as a replacement for DevOps, not least because there remains a full CI/CD process that needs to be addressed by using traditional DevOps tools.
“Instead, GitOps makes the DevOps team’s work easier by simplifying the continuous delivery and deployment of new software components to a Kubernetes cluster. But looking ahead, it’s likely that over time, more cloud-native projects will start using GitOps tools like Crossplane and ArgoCD to embrace the advantages it offers,” concluded Jerbi.
GitOps is certainly not the only software engineering tool that could illustrate methods and workflow approaches that might be taken up by businesspeople. The very fact that code syntax has to be correct before it can take its intended functional effect should be a lesson to anyone that struggles with grammar and sentence structure.
Let’s be measured about this initiative though, developers are known for their proclivity to wear shorts in deepest winter, for their love of eating pizza (warm, or old, either is fine) and for drinking an inordinate amount of Dr Pepper (other sodas are also available)… so let’s proceed with collaborative caution.
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