Will GitOps Transform Security?
What Is GitOps?
GitOps is a software delivery methodology that employs declarative Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to create an automated and efficient continuous reconciliation process. It enables developers to write declarative code that defines the desired state to be automatically maintained. You keep these instructions in a version control system like Git that serves as a single source of truth.
GitOps provides a developer-centric experience that helps power cloud-native applications. Storing the desired state in Git enables you to enforce immutability and ensure that your storage retains a complete version history. The state store provides an audit trail that developers and software agents can use to roll back to previous versions when needed or inform developers.
GitOps Principles
Declarative Infrastructure
GitOps aim to make infrastructure as efficient and automated as possible. It achieves this objective by using declarative Infrastructure as Code (IaC). IaC enables you to manage and provision infrastructure resources by using machine-readable definition files.
Declarative configuration means that you define the desired end state, and the system automatically adjusts its configuration to match that state. This is much easier and more repeatable than writing a script that specifies the steps to achieving a certain configuration, or manually configuring a system.
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD)
GitOps requires knowledge of the relationship between code changes and the source of truth, while CI/CD introduces automation. Continuous integration ensures that each commit tries to validate predefined criteria based on the assumption that it already is the truth. Continuous delivery ensures the truth reflects the actual system state automatically. Understanding the two aspects of the CI/CD approach is critical because they provide the foundation for GitOps.
Version Control
Version control is an efficient way to manage code changes. It allows developers to use a Git repository as the single source of truth for a project, ensuring that all code elements are traceable and enabling simple rollbacks. Development teams can track every code change by initiating a pull request.
Version control functions allow developers to collaborate quickly and efficiently to produce code and minimize outages and disruptions. It enables the team to revert to an earlier code version if a developer makes a mistake or if there’s a system error. These fast rollbacks prevent issues from interrupting the overall workload.
Automated Change Approval
Declarative coding approach methods enable the automation of code change approvals. The system can automatically apply all the necessary changes to match the desired target state declared in Git. This approach eliminates the need for cluster credentials to initiate changes, helping accelerate the deployment cycle.
Automated source control systems allow development teams to manage the entire software development process easily. GitOps offers a suitable environment, enabling easy task delegation throughout the code change management pipeline. It allows developers to manage CI/CD technologies centrally by implementing environment changes based on the desired target state defined in the Git repository. Read More...