Webinar Highlights: Under the hood of Weave GitOps
In a recent webinar, we outlined the key features and benefits of Weave GitOps Core versus Weave GitOps Enterprise, with demonstrations of the software. Watch the recap.
In a recent webinar, Paul Fremantle, Weaveworks’ VP of Product Engineering, teams up with Paul Curtis, our Principal Solutions Architect, to explain the benefits of Weave GitOps Core and its commercially supported big brother, Weave GitOps Enterprise. As well as outlining its capabilities, they give a live demonstrations of the software.
We’ve recently rearranged the Weaveworks product portfolio to offer two tiers: a free and open source product called Weave GitOps Core, alongside a paid version called Weave GitOps Enterprise.
Whether you’re completely new to GitOps or you’ve been considering it as an option for some time, this webinar explains how the two compare in more detail – and it represents a great place to start learning more.
A little context
Paul Fremantle begins with a top-line introduction of what GitOps is and why it has become so popular in the cloud native world. To help you understand what GitOps can do and why it is so beneficial to cloud native businesses, he presents the GitOps Maturity Model, an emerging categorization of organizations that provides a roadmap from starting out with GitOps to fully scaled continuous delivery. Paul explains where GitOps came from, with reference to its open source roots in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). And then he introduces Weave GitOps Core, with a claim you may have already seen: you can get Weave GitOps up and running with just two commands.
But that’s all just background. The fun starts when his demonstration gets underway (8 minutes in, if you’re pushed for time and you want to skip the intro). Together with the Enterprise demo that follows, it shows how easy it can be to achieve the goal of continuous delivery, regardless of whether you’re using upstream Kubernetes or any of its many distributions.
Starting up Weave GitOps Core
Following a quick download from GitHub, Paul Fremantle’s demo begins with that two-line installation of Weave GitOps Core. In less than five minutes, a pull request is generated that installs a demo application into his local Kubernetes cluster – and Weave GitOps Core is in full operation.
GitOps is about delivering business benefits, however. Which means leaving Weave GitOps Core there and taking a closer look at the power of Weave GitOps Enterprise, which has the features organizations need to progress to the highest levels of the GitOps Maturity Model.
The features of Weave GitOps Enterprise
As a prologue to the enterprise demo, Paul Curtis outlines four key features in the enterprise version: the Application Management user interface, profiles and fleet management, based on the new Cluster API (CAPI).
Application Management
First up is the user interface. This allows you to examine your production application’s state at any time. You can compare it directly with any prior or ‘future’ versions (details of which are held in Git, if these states exist). Crucially, you can roll back if you need to – all from within the management interface. Although the interface is designed for applications, it can also be used to spot problems in the container images themselves – and roll back to an earlier version of your cluster. This increased visibility makes it a great tool for developers as well as operators, as it shows them exactly what is happening inside their apps.
Profile Management
Profiles come next. In Weave GitOps Enterprise, profiles give you a simple yet powerful method of managing and packaging applications. In essence, a profile contains all the resources and artefacts you need to configure and deploy your services. The profile manager enables you to install and manage profiles securely, enabling you to cut deployment time radically and reduce the chance of failed deployments. As you scale your applications and the potential complexity increases, profiles are a valuable tool for helping you to stay organized.
Cluster Management
Finding a way to manage fleets of clusters effectively is vital for organizations at the top end of the GitOps Maturity Model. The fleet management functions in Weave GitOps Enterprise allow you to use and reuse immutable, consistent cluster templates, including everything that defines a cluster’s configuration, from the hardware to the provider and even the version of Kubernetes on which it should run.
These templates are held in and accessed via Git. And because they are in Git, they can be improved on a continuous basis, via the CAPI – which means the latest, best templates are available to you at any time. The best way to appreciate the power of the CAPI, however, is to see it in action in Paul’s demo.
It’s all about the business benefits
Of course, these are not the only benefits of Weave GitOps. Fundamentally, GitOps forges a link between cloud native infrastructure and your business objectives – giving you an easy way to excel against the metrics identified by the DevOps Research and Assessment group (DORA) as being critical to business success. Because success on these measures is the reason cloud native companies are faster, more resilient, and better at answering market needs than more traditional competitors – often with significantly less financial outlay.
Watch the webinar today
The webinar is available to watch on-demand now and is less than an hour in duration, end to end. So take a look today and see why GitOps – whether implemented via the open source Weave GitOps Core or the more full-featured Weave GitOps Enterprise – represents the best way to make continuous delivery a reality.
