Our best GitOps blogs in 2021
Join us on an end-of-year journey through the most interesting and informative posts from the Weaveworks blog in 2021, covering all things GitOps.
As we near the end of 2021, we thought we’d provide a quick recap of the top posts to grace our blog over the course of the year. Which should have been easy – you just pick the posts that received the most hits, right?
The problem with that approach is that we’d just end up listing the posts you’re most likely to have already read. There’s another issue too. We use this blog to provide all sorts of information, from technical walk-throughs to news about product launches and forthcoming events. Some posts naturally stand the test of time better than others.
That’s why we’ve gone for a more qualitative list – one that we feel best represents another year in the accelerating growth of GitOps. The result is not a top 10 and it’s not even a top 12 (much as we tried to pick one for each month). Instead, it’s just our pick of the most significant content, from a technological and business perspective.
So here it is: 2021 in Weaveworks blog posts, as selected by our editorial team.
January: GitOps for Cost Efficiency, Compliance, Velocity, Security, and Resilience
We began the year with a response to the annual report from DORA, the DevOps Research & Assessment organization. Picking up on their key themes, Cornelia gave a presentation – still available to view from within the post – on how GitOps can boost velocity, efficiency, security, resilience and compliance, all at once. Read the blog
If you want to read about the subject in more detail, we followed this piece with a full white paper, which you can download here.
February: Kubernetes at the Edge
In February we ran a two-part series for practitioners, about implementing Kubernetes at the edge. It’s a subject of paramount importance to telcos looking at how they deliver 5G, but also for any business keen to capitalize on what Linux Foundation General Manager Arpit Joshipura has called the Third Act of the Internet.
In part one of Kubernetes at the Edge, we introduced the basic architecture of edge computing, looking specifically at levels of latency that successful edge computing can tolerate. Read part one
Having touched on Kubernetes and GitOps in part one, the concluding post explored cloud native edge computing in more detail, comparing the relative benefits of virtualized network functions (VNFs) with containerized network functions (CNFs), from the perspective of the modern telco. Read part two
March: GitOps at the Edge
In March, we warmed to our theme of automating edge infrastructure. Not only did we discuss the technology itself, but we’ll also took a step back to explore how telcos can use GitOps at the edge to provide for entirely new use cases.
- Read GitOps across the Edge and all Clouds
- Read GitOps use cases at the edge
You can download the full report from analyst firm 451 Group here.
April: From Ops to GitOps
April saw us take a step back – or several steps back, to be exact. In the Journey from Ops to GitOps, we explained how IT operations has evolved from a process that changed little from the Eighties to the end of the 20th Century – and then found itself completely transformed with the arrival of the cloud and subsequently, containers. There was a reason for this unprompted history lesson of course, in that it’s far easier to understand the significance of GitOps when you know how things were done before its arrival. Because GitOps is still at the start of its journey and for many organizations, those pre-cloud practices are still causing the same problems today. Read more on the blog
June: The GitOps Maturity Model – and a new product!
In June, we introduced the GitOps Maturity Model. Maturity models are nothing new in technology but, as GitOps gains a foothold in the enterprise, more and more data on its use is becoming available. This data, together with our own anecdotal experiences with our customers – has enabled us to develop a maturity model that reflects the different levels at which GitOps is practiced in real-life organizations. While this is interesting on its own, it becomes truly useful when used as a roadmap, showing individual organizations what they need to do next to realize the full potential of the model. Learn more on the blog
By this point in the year, we started to notice that interest in GitOps was increasing. The research we did in developing the GitOps Maturity Model suggested that while Continuous Delivery and Infrastructure as Code represent great high-level models, most people working in IT today need something more tangible – something they can actually evaluate, experiment with and then, potentially, implement. This led us to reconfigure our product portfolio around the announcement of a single GitOps product with entry-level and enterprise versions – and Weave GitOps was born. Read more on the blog
July: GigaOm gets involved
GigaOm regularly examines what it considers the key criteria when choosing a vendor for a particular technology. In June, following a groundswell of positive publicity in the first half of the year, it was the turn of GitOps. In a short report, which we summarised on the blog, GigaOm’s analysts defined the ‘table stakes’ – the basic factors a vendor needs to deliver to even say they are offering GitOps, versus the key criteria customers should look for if they want to make the most of the model. Read more on the blog
August: A guide to cloud native patterns
In August, we got technical again, with a fascinating article for technology practitioners on the implementation of cloud native patterns – specifically what kind of toolchain you might want to put together to automate Kubernetes-based infrastructure. It was part of a more detailed piece we made available in the white paper, ‘Automating Kubernetes’. You can download it in full here.
Read more on the blog
September: Developer self-service and 5G operations
One of the things we talk about a lot when discussing GitOps is the effectiveness with which it can be used to deliver a self-service developer platform. But we often overlook a clear description of what a self-service platform entails. In this post, we explained it in basic terms, with a rundown of the benefits to a business of giving your developers the power to move faster. Learn more on the blog
Also in September, we released another white paper focusing on the usefulness of GitOps to telcos currently wrestling with 5G. Entitled ‘Cloud Native Operations at Scale in Next Generation Mobile Networks’, it was summarised in this blog post. If you want to go straight to the full white paper, you can download it here. Read more on the blog
October: How GitOps can help banks compete
It’s not just telcos that stand to benefit from implementing GitOps – it’s a model with the potential to help enterprise organizations of all kinds. But in this post, we focused on one sector in particular: financial services. That’s because it’s a sector that has been transformed by agile, innovative new entrants in recent years. For established financial institutions, often with numerous, monolithic legacy systems, now is the time to make the shift to cloud native. Again, this blog post promoted a full white paper, which you can read here. Read the blog post here
November: The business case for GitOps – and a new product is launched
As the year drew to a close, Weaveworks’ Chief Operations Officer Steve George gave a talk at the DevOps Enterprise Summit, explaining from a business perspective why GitOps is something that needs to be on every organization’s radar. Drawing on the factors identified by DORA as a result of their research, he presented a compelling argument – one you can watch in full here.
That leaves time for the last big piece of news from Weaveworks in 2021: the general availability (GA) launch of Weave GitOps and Weave GitOps Enterprise. You heard it here first
