What is GitOps

and why do I recommend using Argo CD?

So, what is GitOps and why do I recommend using Argo CD?

The long and short is, GitOps is a software development framework that enables organizations to continuously deliver software applications while efficiently managing IT infrastructure using Git as a single source of truth. Git as a single source of truth is being adopted by almost every cloud driven company.

GitOps follows the principle of "infrastructure as code", which means that you define your desired state of your system in declarative configuration files that are stored and versioned in a Git repository. Any changes to these files trigger an automated process that applies them to your system, ensuring consistency and reliability. No more “kubectl appy -f myfile.yml”.

Let’s take a look at Argo CD.

Argo CD is an open-source GitOps continuous delivery tool for Kubernetes. It monitors your cluster and your declarative configuration files stored in a Git repository and resolves differences between the two - effectively automating an application deployment. Argo CD supports multiple config management tools such as Kustomize, Helm, Jsonnet, and plain YAML files. You can also use any custom config management tool configured as a plugin. Personally, I use YAML.

Some of the benefits of using Argo CD are:

- You can manage and deploy applications to multiple clusters with ease

- You can integrate with various SSO providers such as GitHub, GitLab, Microsoft, OAuth2, OIDC, LinkedIn, LDAP, and SAML 2.0

- You can enforce multi-tenancy and RBAC policies for authorization

- You can rollback or roll-anywhere to any application configuration committed in Git

- You can visualize deployment issues, detect and remediate configuration drift

- You can access web UI or CLI for automation and CI integration

- You can leverage webhooks from GitHub, BitBucket, or GitLab to trigger actions

If you want to learn more about how Argo CD works and how to get started with it, check out their official documentation here: https://argo-cd.readthedocs.io/.

Make sure to check out my YouTube video on Argo CD.

Cheers,

Joe