Optimizing Kubernetes Management with GitOps and CD Tools.
We’ve come a long way from the days of deploying releases to individual machines, whether manually or by an automated process.
The de-facto standard today is to deploy and manage the application stack using an orchestrator, usually Kubernetes.
However, Kubernetes carries its own challenges. Although you can manage your stack in one centralized place, you still have to manage deployments, updates, rollbacks, and the overall infra.
When Kubernetes was in its early years, services were deployed either manually or through CI/CD using kubectl or Helm.
There was nothing to describe the desired state and no easy way to keep track of changes or revert them. To solve these issues, GitOps was added to the mix.
Single Source of Truth with Increased Visibility and Operability
The idea behind GitOps is a git repo that describes the desired state of the infrastructure and the application stack that runs on it.
Combined with CI/CD, GitOps allows for fast and efficient infra provisioning and application lifecycle management.
In the context of GitOps and Kubernetes, any change to the source code triggers a change in the cluster or application stack.
Changes are tracked and releases are tagged with a version and can be rolled back as fast as they can be deployed.
Best of all, no one is running manual commands which can be very error prone. In essence, GitOps centralises all operations related to deployments and infra management while allowing various teams to both collaborate and work independently.
Continuous Delivery Tools to Enhance GitOps
However, GitOps and CI/CD for Kubernetes still lack something in terms of really being able to manage the infra and application stack.
Managing deployments and infra becomes easier with GitOps thanks to declarative continuous delivery tools for Kubernetes such as Argo CD or Flux CD.
These tools act as a wrapper around your codebase which translates everything declarative into actual state. Your codebase holds all of your Kubernetes manifests, Helm charts, and configuration files. Argo CD then takes it, evaluates it, and applies it to the cluster.
Such tools also offer intuitive and convenient UI to visualize and manage everything that is going on in the cluster.
It’s good to be able to revert a deployment or fix a configuration issue through the UI and on the spot rather than going through the process of committing code and waiting for it to sync. This is especially true in case of an emergency or when developing and debugging.
The Real Benefits of Combining GitOps and CD Tools
When put into the context of everyday work of developers and DevOps, the real benefits of GitOps and CD tools come into light. What GitOps and CD tools offer is a nice package of intuitive and secure easy-to-use framework for management and collaboration.
Ease of Use and Visibility into the State of the Application and Cluster
The truth is that although not too difficult, setting up a GitOps codebase with CD tools can be a complex task. However, once in place, they grant ease of use with increased security.
Reading Kubernetes manifests to understand the complex relationship of services and components is not easy. It’s even harder to debug and troubleshoot issues with no centralized control dashboard.
- It’s easier with CD tools because they visualize everything that the code represents.
- It’s easier to discern the components of a service or the various CRDs that have been added to the cluster when they appear in front of you with all their dependencies and associations.
CD tools have robust control, logging, and debugging features which allow developers and DevOps to quickly assess the status of the cluster and respond accordingly. There’s no need to run kubectl commands or tail pod logs. Everything is intuitively visualized in the CD tool.
Secure Operations
Having everything visualised and controllable from outside the cluster, does away with the need to access the cluster itself.
Developers and DevOps can be given roles through RBAC to determine which resources they have access to and what they can do in the CD tool itself rather than in the cluster.
Although access is ultimately given to components of the cluster and application, it’s still better than having to manage service accounts and having dozens of developers running exec into pods.
For additional security, CD tools sit inside the cluster and communicate with native API so their function takes place inside the cluster and not outside. There’s no need to open the cluster to external CI/CD pipelines.
Quick Recovery, Consistency, and Guardrails
Recovery is built into CD Tools. CD tools continuously monitor the state of the cluster and compare with what the code says.
In case of a mismatch, the CD tool attempts to reconcile between the two. If it fails, it will retry several times before sending an alert and even pausing sync.
Retries are especially important in complex systems with vast networks of dependencies between services and components.
Even if the code dictates service dependencies and the order of deployment, dependencies could still fail.
By retry, CD tools give all components of the system more time and more chances to go online before failing the deployment and pausing progress.
Since there are no imperative commands running without a state, GitOps prevents the occurrence of hanging resources. If you remove a manifest file or parts of it, the CD tools will sync immediately, without any CI/CD pipeline, and remove the corresponding resources and components.
Management of Multiple Environments and Applications
With inherent security, ease of use, and built-in recovery, GitOps and CD tools are easily expanded to support the configuration and management of multi-env, multi-app stacks. It becomes much easier to separate environments:
- Different environments for development and production.
- Regional stacks for compliance or disaster recovery.
- Separate applications for business units in the organization.
Since the initial setup is most of what it takes to get GitOps and CD tools going, it’s incredibly easy to set up multiple stacks and manage both separately, as they are different stacks, and side-by-side in one place, as they are centrally managed.
The Application Needs GitOps and CD Tools
Keeping the application stack and cluster in order and in the desired state is the main function of GitOps and CD tools. There's no guessing how the cluster should be or what should be in and who or what put it there. Everything is conveniently visualized with a vast array of actions that can be performed right from within the UI. GitOps and CD tools give developers and DevOps the ability to work independently in a secure and safe way. Secure in terms of access that is restricted to the CD tools itself. Safe in terms of the ability to quickly revert changes and the self-healing properties of CD tools. It’s not the easiest task to set up GitOps with CD tools, but the agility, convenience, productivity and security that they offer allow for well-managed operations. Well-managed operations then allow for faster and safer development pipelines to further advance your application and product.
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